 Volume 1 Chapter 5 of Marius the Epicurean This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Marius the Epicurean by Walter Patta Chapter 5 The Golden Book The two lads were lounging together over a book, half-buried in a heap of dry corn in an old granary, the quiet corner to which they had climbed out of the way of their noisier companions on one of their blandest holiday afternoons. They looked round. The western suns smoked through the broad chinks of the shutters. How like a picture! And it was precisely the scene described in what they were reading with just that added poetic touch in the book which made it delightful and select. And, in the actual place, the ray of sunlight transforming the rough grain among the cool brown shadows into heaps of gold. What they were intent on was indeed the Book of Books, the golden book of that day. A gift to Flavian, as was shown by the purple writing on the handsome yellow wrapper following the title, Flaviane, it said. Flaviane, lege feliciter, Flaviane, we was floreas, Flaviane, we was gaudias. It was perfumed with oil of sandalwood and decorated with carved and gilt ivory bosses at the ends of the roller. And the inside was something not less dainty and fine, full of the archaisms and curious felicities in which that generation delighted. Quaint terms and images picked fresh from the early dramatists. The lifelike phrases of some lost poet preserved by an old grammarian, racy morsels of the vernacular, and studied prettinesses. All alike mere playthings for the genuine power and natural eloquence of the erudite artist. Unsuppressed by his erudition, which, however, made some people angry, chiefly less well-got-up people, and especially those who were untidy from indolence. No, it was certainly not that old-fashioned unconscious ease of the early literature which could never come again, which, after all, had had more in common with the infinite patience of Apuleus than with the hackwork readiness of his detractors, who might so well have been self-conscious of going slipshod. And at least his success was unmistakable as to the precise literary effect he had intended, including a certain tincture of neology in expression, nor nihil intedum ela cutione noella param signatum, in the language of Cornelius fronto, the contemporary prince of rhetoricians. What words he had found for conveying, with a single touch, the sense of textures, colours, incidents, like a jeweller's work, like a mirin vase, admirers said of his writing. The golden fibre in the hair, the gold threadwork in the gown, marked her as the mistress. Aorumin colmis et intunichis, ibi inflexum hekin textum, matronam profecto confite batur. He writes, with his curious felicity, of one of his heroines, Aorumin textum, gold fibre. Well, there was something of that kind in his own work. And then, in an age when people from the emperor Aurelius downwards prided themselves unwisely on writing in Greek, he had written for Latin people in their own tongue, though still in truth with all the care of a learned language. Not less happily inventive were the incidents recorded, story within story, stories with the sudden unlooked-for changes of dreams. He had his humorous touches also. And what went to the ordinary boyish taste in those somewhat peculiar readers? What would have charmed boys more purely boyish was the adventure, the bare loose in the house at night, the wolves storming the farms in winter, the exploits of the robbers. Their charming caves, the delightful thrill one had at the question, don't you know that these roads are infested by robbers? The scene of the romance was laid in Thessaly, the original land of witchcraft, and took one up and down its mountains and into its old weird towns, haunts of magic and incantation, where all the more genuine appliances of the black art left behind her by Medea when she fled through that country were still in use. In the city of Hipparta, indeed, nothing seemed to be its true self. You might think that through the murmuring of some cadaverous spell all things had been changed into forms not their own, that there was humanity in the hardness of the stones you stumbled on, that the birds you heard singing were feathered men, that the trees round the walls drew their leaves from a like source. The statues seemed about to move, the walls to speak, the dumb cattle to break out in prophecy, nay, the very sky and the sunbeams, as if they might suddenly cry out. Witches are there who can draw down the moon, or at least the loon of Virus, that white fluid she sheds, to be found so rarely on high, heathy places, which is a poison, a touch of it will drive men mad. And in one very remote village lives the sorceress Pamphile who turns her neighbours into various animals. What true humour in the scene where, after mounting the rickety stairs, Lucius, peeping curiously through a chink in the door, is a spectator of the transformation of the old witch herself into a bird that she may take flight to the object of her affections, into an owl. First she stripped off every rag she had, then, opening a certain chest, she took from it many small boxes, and removing the lid of one of them, rubbed herself over for a long time from head to foot with an ointment it contained, and after much low muttering to her lamp, began to jerk at last and shake her limbs. And as her limbs moved to and fro outburst the soft feathers, stout wings come forth to view, the nose grew hard and hooked, her nails were crooked into claws, and Pamphile was an owl. She uttered a queasy screech, and leaping little by little from the ground, making trial of herself, fled presently on full wing out of doors. By clumsy imitation of this process, Lucius, the hero of the romance, transforms himself not as he had intended into a showy winged creature, but into the animal which has given name to the book. For throughout it there runs a vein of racy, homely satire on the love of magic, then prevalent, curiosity concerning which had led Lucius to meddle with the old woman's appliances. Be you my Venus, he says to the pretty maid servant, who has introduced him to the view of Pamphile, and let me stand by you a winged cupid, and freely applying the magic ointment, sees himself transformed, not into a bird, but into an ass. Well, the proper remedy for his distress is a supper of roses, could such be found, and many are his quaintly picturesque attempts to come by them at that adverse season. As he contrives to do at last, when the grotesque procession of Isis passing by with a bear and other strange animals in its train, the ass following along with the rest suddenly crunches the chaplet of roses carried in the high priest's hand. Meantime, however, he must wait for the spring with more than the outside of an ass, though I was not so much a fool, nor so truly an ass, he tells us, when he happens to be left alone with a daintily-spread table. As to neglect this most delicious fare and feed upon coarse hay, for in truth all through the book there is an unmistakably real feeling for asses with bold touches like swifts and a genuine animal breath. Lucius was the original ass who peeping slyly from the window of his hiding place forgot all about the big shade he cast just above him and gave occasion to the joke or proverb about the peeping ass and his shadow. But the marvellous delight in which is one of the really serious elements in most boys passed at times, those young readers still feeling its fascination into what French writers call the macabre, that species of almost insane preoccupation with the materialities of our mouldering flesh, that luxury of disgust in gazing on corruption which was connected, in this writer at least, with not a little obvious coarseness. It was a strange notion of the gross lust of the actual world that Marius took from some of these episodes. I am told, they read, that when foreigners are interred the old witches are in the habit of outracing the funeral procession to ravage the corpse in order to obtain certain cuttings and remnants from it with which to injure the living especially if the witch has happened to cast her eye upon some goodly young man. And the scene of the night-watching of a dead body, lest the witches should come to tear off the flesh with their teeth, is worthy of feel goutier. But set as one of the episodes in the main narrative, a true gem amid its mockeries, its course, though genuine humanity, its burlesque horrors, came the tale of Cupid and Psyche, full of brilliant life-like situations, speciosa loquice, and a bounding in lovely, visible imagery. One seemed to see and handle the golden hair, the fresh flowers, the precious works of art in it, yet full also of a gentle idealism so that you might take it if you chose for an allegory. With a concentration of all his finer literary gifts, Apuleius had gathered into it the floating star-matter of many a delightful old story. The Story of Cupid and Psyche In a certain city lived a king and queen who had three daughters exceeding fair. But the beauty of the elder sisters, though pleasant to behold, yet passed not the measure of human praise, while such was the loveliness of the youngest that men's speech was too poor to commend it worthily, and could express it not at all. Many of the citizens and of strangers, whom the fame of this excellent vision had gathered thither, confounded by that matchless beauty, could but kiss the fingertips of their right hands at the sight of her, as in adoration to the goddess Venus herself. And soon a rumour passed through the country that she whom the blue deep had borne for bearing her divine dignity was even then moving among men, or that by some fresh germination from the stars. Not the sea now, but the earth had put forth a new Venus endued with the flower of virginity. This belief with the fame of the maiden's loveliness went daily farther into distant lands so that many people were drawn together to behold that glorious model of the age. Men sailed no longer to Paphos, to Knidus or Sithera, to the presence of the goddess Venus. Her sacred rites were neglected, her images stood uncrowned, the cold ashes were left to disfigure her forsaken altars. It was to a maiden that men's prayers were offered to a human countenance they looked in propitiating so great a godhead. When the girl went forth in the morning they strewed flowers on her way and the victims proper to that unseen goddess were presented as she passed along. This conveyance of divine worship to a mortal kindled meantime the anger of the true Venus. Lo, now, the ancient parent of nature, she cried, the fountain of all elements, behold me, Venus, benign mother of the world, sharing my honors with a mortal maiden, while my name, built up in heaven, is profaned by the mean things of earth. Shall a perishable woman bear my image about with her? In vain did the shepherd of Ida prefer me. Yet shall she have little joy, whosoever she be, of her usurped and unlawful loveliness. Thereupon she called to her that winged, bold boy of evil ways, who wanders armed by night through men's houses, spoiling their marriages, and, stirring yet more by her speech his inborn wantonness, she led him to the city and showed him Psyche as she walked. I pray thee, she said, give thy mother a full revenge, let this maid become the slave of an unworthy love. Then, embracing him closely, she departed to the shore and took her throne upon the crest of the wave. And lo! at her unuttered will her ocean servants are in waiting, the daughters of Nereus are there singing their song and Portunus and Selachia and the tiny charioteer of the Dolphin with a host of tritons leaping through the billows and one blows softly through his sounding seashell, another spreads a silken web against the sun, a third presents the mirror to the eyes of his mistress while the others swim side by side below drawing her chariot. Such was the escort of Venus as she went upon the sea. Psyche, meantime, aware of her loveliness had no fruit thereof. All people regarded and admired, but none sought her in marriage. It was but as on the finished work of the craftsman that they gazed upon that divine likeness. Her sisters, less fair than she, were happily wedded. She, even as a widow sitting at home, wept over her desolation, hating in her heart the beauty in which all men were pleased. And the king, supposing the gods were angry, inquired of the Oracle of Apollo and Apollo answered him thus, Let the damsel be placed on the top of a certain mountain adorned as for the bed of marriage and of death. Look not for a son-in-law of mortal birth, but for that evil serpent thing by reason of whom even the gods tremble and the shadows of sticks are afraid. So the king returned home and made known the Oracle to his wife. For many days she lamented, but at last the fulfilment of the divine precept is urgent upon her and the company make ready to conduct the maiden to her deadly bridle. And now the nuptial torch gathers dark smoke and ashes. The pleasant sound of the pipe is changed into a cry. The marriage hymn concludes in a sorrowful wailing. Below her yellow wedding veil the bride shook away her tears. In so much that the whole city was afflicted together at the ill luck of the stricken house. But the mandate of the god impelled the hapless Psyche to her fate and these solemnities being ended the funeral of the living soul goes forth all the people following. Psyche, bitterly weeping, assists not at her marriage but at her own obsequies and while the parents hesitate to accomplish a thing so unholy the daughter cries to them wherefore torment your luckless age by long weeping this was the prize of my extraordinary beauty. When all people celebrated us with divine honours and in one voice named the new Venus it was then you should have wept for me as one dead. Now at last I understand that that one name of Venus has been my ruin. Lead me and set me upon the appointed place. I am in haste to submit to that well-omined marriage to behold that goodly spouse. Why delay the coming of him who was born for the destruction of the whole world? She was silent and with firm step went on the way and they proceeded to the appointed place on a steep mountain and left there the maiden alone and took their way homewards dejectedly. The wretched parents in their close shut house yielded themselves to perpetual night while to Psyche fearful and trembling and weeping sore upon the mountaintop comes the gentle Zephyrus. He lifts her mildly and with vesture afloat on either side bears her by his own soft breathing over the windings of the hills and sets her lightly among the flowers in the bosom of a valley below. Psyche in those delicate grassy places lying sweetly on her dewy bed rested from the agitation of her soul and arose in peace and low a grove of mighty trees with a fount of water clear as glass in the midst and hard by the water a dwelling-place built not by human hands but by some divine cunning. One recognized even at the entering the delightful hostility of a god. Golden pillars sustained the roof arched most curiously in cedarwood and ivory. The walls were hidden under wrought silver all tame and woodland creatures leaping forward to the visitors gaze. Wonderful indeed was the craftsman divine or half-divine who by the subtlety of his art had breathed so wild a soul into the silver. The very pavement was distinct with pictures in goodly stones. In the glow of its precious metal the house is its own daylight having no need of the sun. Well might it seem a place fashion for the conversation of gods with men. Psyche, drawn forward by the delight of it came near and her courage growing stood within the doorway. One by one she admired the beautiful things she saw and most wonderful of all no lock, no chain, nor living guardian protected that great treasure house. But as she gazed there came a voice a voice as it were unclothed of bodily vesture. Mistress it said all these things are thine lie down and relieve thy weariness and rise again for the bath when thou wilt we thy servants whose voice thou hearest will be beforehand with our service and a royal feast shall be ready. Psyche understood that some divine care was providing and refreshed with sleep and the bath sat down to the feast. Still she saw no one only she heard words falling here and there and had voices alone to serve her. And the feast being ended one entered the chamber and sang to her unseen while another struck the chords of a harp invisible with him who played on it. Afterwards the sound of a company singing together came to her but still so that none was present to sight yet it appeared that a great multitude of singers was there. And the hour of evening inviting her she climbed into the bed and as the night was far advanced behold a sound of a certain clemency approach to her. Then fearing for her maidenhood in so great solitude she trembled and more than any evil she knew dreaded that she knew not. And now the husband that unknown husband drew near and ascended the couch and made her his wife and lo! before the rise of dawn he had departed hastily. And the attendant voices ministered to the needs of the newly married. And so it happened with her for a long season and as nature has willed this new thing by continual use became a delight to her. The sound of the voices grew to be her solace in that condition of loneliness and uncertainty. One night the bridegroom spoke thus to his beloved O psyche, most pleasant bride fortune is grown stern with us and threatens thee with mortal peril. Thy sisters troubled at the report of thy death and seeking some trace of thee will come to the mountain's top. But if by chance their cries reach thee, answer not, neither look forth at all lest thou bring sorrow upon me and destruction upon thyself. Then psyche promised that she would do according to his will. But the bridegroom was fled away again with the night and all that day she spent in tears repeating that she was now dead indeed, shut up in that golden prison powerless to console her sisters sorrowing after her or to see their faces and so went to rest, weeping. And after a while came the bridegroom again and lay down beside her and embracing her as she wept complained, was this thy promise, my psyche what have I to hope from thee? Even in the arms of thy husband thou ceasest not from pain. Do now as thou wilt indulge thine own desire though it seeks what will ruin thee. Yet wilt thou remember my warning, repentant too late. Then protesting that she is like to die she obtains from him that he suffer her to see her sisters and present to them moreover what gifts she would of golden ornaments. But therewith he often times advised her never at any time yielding to pernicious counsel to inquire concerning his bodily form lest she fall through unholy curiosity from so greater height of fortune nor feel ever his embrace again. I would die a hundred times she said, cheerful at last rather than be deprived of thy most sweet usage. I love thee as my own soul beyond comparison even with love himself only bid thy servants of fire as bring hither my sisters as he brought me my honeycomb, my husband thy Psyche's breath of life. So he promised and after the embraces of the night ere the light appeared vanished from the hands of his bride and the sisters coming to the place where Psyche was abandoned wept loudly among the rocks and called upon her by name so that the sound came down to her and running out of the palace distraught she cried wherefore afflict your souls with lamentation I whom you mourn am here. Then summoning Zephyrus she reminded him of her husband's bidding and he bear them down with a gentle blast. Enter now, she said, into my house and relieve your sorrow in the company of Psyche, your sister. And Psyche displayed to them all the treasures of the Golden House and its great family of ministering voices nursing in them the malice which was already at their hearts and at last one of them asked curiously who the lord of that celestial array may be and what manner of man her husband and Psyche answered dissemblingly a young man handsome and manily with a goodly beard once upon the mountains and lest the secret should slip from her in the way of further speech loading her sisters with golden gems she commanded Zephyrus to bear them away and they returned home on fire with envy see now the injustice of fortune cried one we, the elder children are given like servants to be the wives of strangers while the youngest is possessed by the great riches who scarcely knows how to use them you saw a sister what a horde of wealth lies in the house what glittering gowns what splendour of precious gems besides all that gold trodden underfoot if she indeed hath, as she said a bridegroom so goodly then no one in all the world is happier and it may be that this husband, being of divine nature will make her too a goddess nay, so in truth it is it was even thus she bore herself already she looks aloft and breathes divinity who though but a woman has voices for her handmaidens and can command the winds think, answered the other how arrogantly she dealt with us grudging us these trifling gifts out of all that store and when our company became a burden causing us to be hissed and driven away from her through the air but I am no woman if she keep her hold on this great fortune and if the insult done us has touched thee too, take we counsel together meanwhile let us hold our peace and no nought of her alive or dead for they are not truly happy of whose happiness other folk are unaware and the bridegroom whom she still knows not warns her thus a second time as he talks with her by night seeest thou what peril besets thee those cunning wolves have made ready for thee their snares of which the sum is that they persuade thee to search into the fashion of my countenance the seeing of which, as I have told thee often, will be the seeing of it no more for ever but do thou neither listen nor make answer to ought regarding thy husband besides, we have sown also the beauty of our race even now this bosom grows with a child to be born to us a child if thou but keep our secret of divine quality if thou profane it, subject to death and Psyche was glad at the tidings rejoicing in that solace of a divine seed and in the glory of that pledge of love to be and the dignity of the name of mother anxiously she notes the increase of the days, the waning months and again as he tarries briefly beside her the brygrum repeats his warning even now the sword is drawn with which thy sisters seek thy life have pity on thyself sweet wife and upon our child and see not those evil women again but the sisters make their way into the palace once more crying to her in wily tones oh Psyche and thou too will be a mother and great will be the joy at home happy indeed shall we be to have the nursing of the golden child, truly if he be answerable to the beauty of his parents it will be a birth of Cupid himself so little by little they stole upon the heart of their sister she meanwhile bids the lyre to sound for their delight and the playing is heard she bids the pipes to move and the music and the singing come invisibly soothing the mind of the listener with sweetest modulation yet not even thereby was their malice put to sleep once more they seek to know what manner of husband she has and whence that seed and Psyche simple over much forgetful of her first story answers my husband comes from a far country trading for great sums plenty of middle age with whitening locks and therewith she dismisses them again and returning home upon the soft breath of Zephyrus one cried to the other what shall be said of so ugly a lie he who was a young man with goodly beard is now in middle life it must be that she told a false tale else is she in very truth ignorant what manner of man he is or it be let us destroy her quickly for if she indeed knows not be sure that her bridegroom is one of the gods it is a god she bears in her womb and let that be far from us if she be called mother of a god then will life be more than I can bear so full of rage against her they returned to Psyche and said to her craftily thou livest in an ignorant bliss all in curious of thy real danger it is a deadly serpent as we certainly know that comes to sleep at thy side remember the words of the oracle which declared the destined to a cruel beast there are those who have seen it at nightfall coming back from its feeding in no long time they say it will end its blandishments it but waits for the babe to be formed in thee that it may devour thee by so much the richer indeed the solitude of this musical place or it may be the loathsome commerce of a hidden love delight thee we at least in sisterly piety have done our part and at last the unhappy Psyche simple and frail of soul carried away by the terror of their words losing memory of her husband's precepts and her own promise brought upon herself a great calamity trembling and turning pale she answers them and they who tell those things it may be speak the truth for in very deed never have I seen the face of my husband nor know I at all what manner of man he is always he frights me diligently from the sight of him threatening some great evil should I too curiously look upon his face do ye if ye can help your sister in her great peril stand by her now her sisters answered her the way of safety we have well considered and will teach thee take a sharp knife and hide it in that part of the couch where thou art want to lie take also a lamp filled with oil and set it privily behind the curtain and when he shall have drawn up his coils into the accustomed place and thou hearest him breathe in sleep slip then from his side and discover the lamp and knife in hand by strength and strike off the serpent's head and so they departed in haste and Psyche left alone alone but for the furies which beset her is tossed up and down in her distress like a wave of the sea and though her will is firm yet in the moment of putting hand to the deed she falters and is torn asunder by various apprehension of the great calamity upon her she hastens and anon delays now full of distrust and now of angry courage under one bodily form she loathes the monster and loves the bridegroom but twilight ushers in the night and at length in haste she makes ready for the terrible deed darkness came and the bridegroom and he first after some feint essay of love falls into a deep sleep and she ear-while of no strength the hard purpose of destiny assisting her is confirmed in force with lamp plucked forth knife in hand she put by her sex and lo as the secrets of the bed became manifest the sweetest and most gentle of all creatures love himself reclined there in his own proper loveliness at the sight of him the very flame of the lamp kindled more gladly but Psyche was afraid at the vision and feint of soul trembled back upon her knees and would have hidden the steel in her own bosom but the knife slipped from her hand and now undone yet off times looking upon the beauty of that divine countenance she lives again she sees the locks of that golden head pleasant with the unction of the gods even in graceful entanglement behind and before about the ruddy cheeks and white throat the pinions of the winged god yet fresh from the dew are spotless upon his shoulders the delicate plumage wavering over them as they lie at rest smooth he was and touched with light worthy of Venus his mother at the foot of the couch lay his bow and arrows to her, propitious to men and Psyche gazing hungrily thereon draws an arrow from the quiver and trying the point upon her thumb tremulous steel drave in the barb so that a drop of blood came forth thus fell she by her own act and unaware into the love of love falling upon the bridegroom with in-drawn breath in a hurry of kisses from eager she shuddered as she thought how brief that sleep might be and it chanced that a drop of burning oil fell from the lamp upon the god's shoulder ah Maladroit minister of love thus to wound him from whom all fire comes though it was a lover I trow first devised thee to have the fruit of his desire even in the darkness at the touch of the fire the god started up holding the overthrow of her faith quietly took flight from her embraces and Psyche as he rose upon the wing laid hold on him with her two hands hanging upon him in his passage through the air till she sinks to the earth through weariness and as she lay there the divine lover tarrying still lighted upon a cypress tree which grew near and from the top of it spake thus to her in great emotion foolish one unmindful of the command of Venus my mother who had devoted thee to one of base degree I fled to thee in his stead now know I that this was vainly done into my own flesh pierced my arrow and I made thee my wife only that I might seem a monster beside thee that thou should seek to wound the head wherein lay the eyes so full of love to thee again and again I thought to put thee on thy guard concerning these things and warned thee in loving kindness now I would but punish thee by my flight hence and therewith he winged his way into the deep sky Psyche prostrate upon the earth and following far as sight might reach the flight of the bridegroom wept and lamented and when the breadth of space had parted him wholly from her cast herself down from the bank of a river which was nigh but the stream turning gentle in honour of the god put her forth again unhurt upon its margin and as it happened pan the rustic god was sitting just then by the water-side embracing in the body of a reed the goddess Kanna teaching her to respond to him in all varieties of slender sound hard by his flock of goats browsed at will and the shaggy god called her wounded and outworn kindly to him and said I am but a rustic herdsman pretty maiden yet wise by favour of my great age and long experience and if I guess truly by those faltering steps by thy sorrowful eyes and continual sighing thou labourest with excess of love listen then to me and seek not death again in the stream or otherwise put aside thy woe and turn thy prayers to Cupid he is in truth a delicate youth win him by the delicacy of thy service so the shepherd god spoke and Psyche answering nothing but with a reverence to his serviceable deity went on her way and while she in her search after Cupid wandered through many lands he was lying in the chamber of his mother heart sick and the white bird which floats over the waves plunged in haste into the sea and approaching Venus as she bathed made known to her that her son lies afflicted with some grievous hurt doubtful of life and Venus cried angrily my son then has a mistress and it is Psyche who wished away my beauty and was the rival of my godhead whom he loves issued from the sea and returning to her golden chamber found there the lad sick as she had heard and cried from the doorway well done truly to trample thy mother's precepts under foot to spare my enemy that cross of unworthy love nay unite her to thyself child as thou art that I might have a daughter in law who hates me I will make the repent of thy sport and rage bitter there is one who shall chasten this body of thine put out thy torch and unstring thy bow not till she has plucked forth that hair into which so off these hands have smoothed the golden light and sheared away thy wings shall I feel the injury done me avenged and with this she hastened in anger from the doors and Ceres and Juno met her and sought to know the meaning of the troubled countenance ye come in season she cried I pray you find for me psyche it must needs be that ye have heard the disgrace of my house and they ignorant of what was done would have soothed her anger saying what fault mistress hath thy son committed that thou wouldst destroy the girl he loves no is thou not that he is now of age because he wears his years so lightly must he seem to thee ever but a child wilt thou for ever thus pry into the pastimes of thy son always accusing his wantonness and blaming in him those delicate wiles which are all thine own thus in secret fear of the boy's bow did they seek to please him with their gracious patronage but Venus angry at their light taking of her wrongs turned her back upon them and with hasty steps she went once more to the sea meanwhile psyche tossed in soul wandering hither and thither rested not night or day in the pursuit of her husband desiring if she might not soothe his anger by the endearments of a wife at least to propitiate him with the prayers of a handmaid and seeing a certain temple on the top of a high mountain she said who knows whether yonder place my lord thither therefore she turned her steps hastening now the moor because desire and hope pressed her on weary as she was with the labours of the way and so painfully measuring out the highest ridges of the mountain drew near to the sacred couches she sees ears of wheat in heaps or twisted into chaplets ears of barley also with sickles and all the instruments of harvest lying there in disorder thrown at random from the hands of the labours in the great heat these she curiously sets apart one by one duly ordering them for she said within herself I may not neglect the shrines nor the holy service of any god there be but must rather win by supplication the kindly mercy of them all and Ceres found her bending sadly upon her task and cried aloud Alas, Psyche Venus in the furiousness of her anger tracks thy footsteps through the world seeking for thee to pay her the utmost penalty and thou, thinking of anything rather than thine own safety hast taken on thee the care of what belongs to me then Psyche fell down at her feet and sweeping the floor with her hair washing the footsteps of the goddess in her tears besought her mercy with many prayers by the gladdening rites of harvest by the lighted lamps and mystic marches of the marriage and mysterious invention of thy daughter proserpinae and by all beside that the holy place of Attica veils in silence minister I pray thee to the sorrowful heart of Psyche suffer me to hide myself but for a few days among the heaps of corn some have softened the anger of the goddess and my strength outworn in my long travail be recovered by a little rest but Ceres answered her truly thy tears move me and I would feign help thee only I dare not incur the ill-will of my kin's woman depart hence as quickly as may be and Psyche repelled against hope afflicted now with twofold sorrow making her way back again to the half-lighted woods of the valley below a sanctuary builded with cunning art and that she might lose no way of hope howsoever doubtful she drew near to the sacred doors she seized their gifts of price and garments fixed upon the doorposts and to the branches of the trees wrought with letters of gold which told the name of the goddess to whom they were dedicated with thanksgiving for that she had done so with bent knee and hands laid about the glowing altar she prayed saying sister and spouse of Jupiter be thou to these my desperate fortunes do know the auspicious I know that thou dost willingly help those in travail with child deliver me from the peril that is upon me and as she prayed thus do know in the majesty of her godhead was straightway present and answered would that I might incline favourably to thee but against the will of Venus whom I have ever loved as a daughter I may not for very shame grant I prayer and Psyche dismayed by this new shipwreck of her hope communed thus with herself with her from the midst of the snares that beset me shall I take my way once more in what dark solitude shall I hide me from the all-seeing eye of Venus what if I put on at length a man's courage and yielding myself unto her as my mistress softened by a humility not yet too late the fierceness of her purpose who knows but that I may find him also whom my soul seeketh after in the abode of his mother and Venus renouncing all earthly aid in her search prepared to return to heaven she ordered the chariot to be made ready wrought for her by Vulcan as a marriage-gift with a cunning of hand which had left his work so much the richer by the weight of gold it lost under his tool from the multitude which housed about the bed-chamber of their mistress white doves came forth and with joyful motions bent their painted necks beneath the yoke behind it with playful riot the sparrows sped onward sweet of song making known by their soft notes the approach of the goddess eagle and cruel hawk alarmed not the choirful family of Venus and the clouds broke away as the uttermost aether opened to receive her daughter and goddess with great joy and Venus passed straight way to the house of Jupiter to beg from him the service of Mercury the god of speech and Jupiter refused not her prayer and Venus and Mercury descended from heaven together and as they went the former said to the latter thou knowest my brother of Arcady that never at any time have I done anything without thy help for how long moreover I have sought a certain maiden in vain and now nought remains but that by thy heraldry I proclaim a reward for whomsoever shall find her quickly and therewith she conveyed to him a little script in the which was written the name of Psyche with other things and so returned home and Mercury failed not in his office but departing into all lands proclaimed that whosoever delivered up to Venus the fugitive girl should receive from herself seven kisses one thereof full of the inmost honey of her throat with that the doubt of Psyche was ended and now as she came near to the doors of Venus one of the household whose name was use and want ran out to her crying hast thou learnt wicked maid now at last that thou hast a mistress and seizing her roughly by the hair drew her into the presence of Venus and when Venus saw her she cried out saying thou hast dained then to make thy salutations to thy mother-in-law now will I in turn treat thee as becomingth a dutiful daughter-in-law and she took barley and millet and poppy seed every kind of grain and seed and mixed them together and laughed and said to her me think so plain a maiden can earn lovers only by industrious ministry now will I also make trial of thy service sought me this heap of seed the one kind from the other and get thy task done before the evening and Psyche stunned by the cruelty of her bidding was silent and moved not her hand to the inextricable heap and there came forth a little ant which had understanding of the difficulty of her task and took pity upon the consort of the god of love and he ran deftly hither and thither and called together the whole army of his fellows have pity he cried nimble scholars of the earth mother of all things have pity upon the wife of love and hastened to help her in her perilous effort then one upon the other the hosts of the insect people hurried together and they sorted asunder the whole heap of seed separating every grain after its kind and so departed quickly out of sight and at nightfall Venus returned and seeing that task finished with so wonderful diligence she cried the work is not thine thou naughty maid but his in whose eyes thou hast found favour and calling her again in the morning see now the grove she said beyond yonder torrent certain sheep feed there whose fleeces shine with gold fetch me straightway a lock of that precious stuff having gotten it as thou maced and Psyche went forth willingly in command of Venus but even to seek a rest from her labour in the depths of the river but from the river the green reed lowly mother of music spake to her O Psyche, pollute not these waters by self-destruction nor approach that terrible flock for as the heat groweth they waxed fierce lie down under yon plain tree till the quiet of the river's breath have soothed them from the fleecy gold from the trees of the grove for it holdeth by the leaves and Psyche instructed thus by the simple reed in the humanity of its heart filled her bosom with the soft golden stuff and returned to Venus but the goddess smiled bitterly and said to her well now I, who was the author of this thing also I will make further trial of thy discretion and the boldness of thy heart now the utmost peak of yonder steep mountain the dark stream which flows down thence waters the Stygian fields and swells the flood of Coquitus bring me now in this little urn a draught from its innermost source and therewith she put into her hands a vessel of wrought crystal and Psyche set forth in haste on her way to the mountain looking there at last to find the end of her hapless life but when she came to the region which borders on the cliff that was showed to her she understood the deadly nature of her task from a great rock steep and slippery a horrible river of water poured forth falling straightway by a channel exceeding narrow into the unseen gulf below and low creeping from the rocks on either hand angry serpents with their long necks and sleepless eyes the very waters found a voice and bade her depart in smothered cries of depart hence and what doest thou hear look around thee and destruction is upon thee and thence left her in the immensity of her peril as one changed to stone yet not even then did the distress of this innocent soul escape the steady eye of gentle providence for the bird of Jupiter spread his wings and took flight to her and asked her didst thou think simple one even thou that thou could steal one drop of that relentless stream the holy river of sticks terrible even to the gods but give me thine urn and the bird took the urn and filled it at the source and returned to her quickly bringing with him of the waters all unwilling nay, warning him to depart away and not molest them and she, receiving the urn with great joy, ran back quickly that she might deliver it to Venus and yet again satisfied not the angry goddess my child she said in this one thing further must thou serve me take now this tiny casket and get thee down even unto hell for it to prosper pene tell her that Venus would have of her beauty so much at least as may suffice for but one day's use that beauty she possessed erewhile being forewarned and spoiled through her tendons upon the sick bed of her son and be not slow in returning and Psyche perceived there the last ebbing of her fortune that she was now thrust openly upon death who must go down her own motion to Hades and the shades and straightway she climbed to the top of an exceedingly high tower thinking within herself I will cast myself down dense so shall I descend most quickly into the kingdom of the dead and the tower again broke forth into speech wretched maid, wretched maid wilt thou destroy thyself if the breath quit thy body then wilt thou indeed go down into Hades but by no means return hither listen to me among the pathless wilds not far from this place lies a certain mountain and therein one of hell's vent holes through the breecher rough way lies open following which thou wilt come by a straight course to the castle of Orcus and thou must not go empty handed take in each hand a morsel of barley bread soaked in hydromel and in thy mouth two pieces of money and when thou shalt be now well onward in the way of death then wilt thou overtake a lame ass laden with wood and a lame driver who will pray thee reach him certain cords to fasten the burden which is falling from the ass but be thou cautious to pass on in silence and soon as thou comest to the river of the dead Charon in that crazy barky hath will put thee over upon the farther side there is greed even among the dead and thou shalt deliver to him for the ferrying one of those two pieces of money in such wise that he take it with his hand from between thy lips and as thou passest over the stream a dead old man rising on the water will put up to thee his mouldering hands and pray thee draw him into the ferry boat but beware thou yield not to unlawful pity when thou shalt be come over and art upon the causeway certain aged women spinning will cry to thee to lend thy hand to their work and beware again that thou take no part therein for this also is the snare of Venus whereby she would cause thee to cast away one at least of those cakes thou bearest in thy hands and think not that a slight matter for the loss of either one of them will be to thee the losing of the light of day for a watchdog exceeding fierce lies ever before the threshold of that lonely house of Prasapine close his mouth with one of thy cakes so shalt thou pass by him and enter straightway into the presence of Prasapine herself then do thou deliver thy message and taking what she shall give thee return back again offering to the watchdog the other cake and to the ferryman that other piece of money thou hast in thy mouth after this manner mayst thou return again beneath the stars but with all I charge thee think not to look into nor open the casket thou bearest with that treasure of the beauty of the divine countenance hidden therein so spake the stones of the tower and Psyche delayed not but proceeding diligently after the manner enjoined entered into the house of Prasapine at whose feet she sat down humbly and would neither the delicate couch nor that divine food the goddess offered her but did straightway the business of Venus and Prasapine filled the casket secretly and shut the lid and delivered it to Psyche who fled therewith from Hades with new strength but coming back into the light of day even as she hasted now to the ending of her service she was seized by a rash curiosity low now she said within herself my simpleness who bearing in my hands the divine loveliness heed not to touch myself with a particle at least therefrom that I may please the more by the favour of it my fair one, my beloved even as she spoke she lifted the lid and behold within neither beauty nor anything beside save sleep only the sleep of the dead which took hold upon her filling all her members with its drowsy vapour so that she lay down in the way and moved not as in the slumber of death and Cupid being healed of his wound because he would endure no longer the absence of her he loved gliding through the narrow window of the chamber wherein he was holding his pinions being now repaired by a little rest fled forth swiftly upon them and coming to the place where Psyche was shook that sleep away from her and set him in his prison again awaking her with the innocent point of his arrow lo, thine old error again he said which had light once more to have destroyed thee but do thou now what is lacking of the command of my mother the rest shall be my care with these words the lover rose upon the air and being consumed inwardly with the greatness of his love penetrated with vehement wing into the highest place of heaven to lay his cause before the father of the gods and the father of the gods took his hand in his and kissed his face and said to him at no time my son hast thou regarded me with due honour often hast thou vexed my bosom with the disposition of the stars with those busy darts of thine nevertheless because thou hast grown up between these mine hands I will accomplish thy desire and straightway he bade Mercury call the gods together and the council chamber being filled sitting upon a high throne ye gods he said all ye whose names are in the white book of the muses ye know yonder lad ye youthful heaps should by some means be restrained and that all occasion may be taken from him I would even confine him in the bonds of marriage he has chosen and embraced a mortal maiden let him have fruit of his love and possess her for ever thereupon he bade Mercury produced Psyche in heaven and holding out to her his ambrosial cup take it he said for ever nor shall cupid ever depart from thee and the gods sat down together to the marriage feast on the first couch lay the bridegroom and Psyche in his bosom his rustic serving boy bare the wine to Jupiter and back us to the rest the seasons crimsoned all things with their roses Apollo sang to the liar while little Pan prattled on his reeds and Venus danced very sweetly to the soft music thus with due rites did Psyche pass into the power of cupid and from them was born the daughter whom men call Voluptas and of chapter 5 volume 1 chapter 6 of Marius the Epicurean this is a Librivox recording all Librivox recordings are in the public domain for further information or to volunteer please visit Librivox.org Marius the Epicurean by Walter Patta chapter 6 euphuism so the famous story composed itself in the memory of Marius with an expression changed in some ways from the original and on the whole graver the petulant boyish cupid of Apuleius was become more like that lord of terrible aspect who stood at Dante's bedside and wept or had at least grown to the manly earnestness of the eros of praxiteles set in relief amid the coarser matter of the book this episode of cupid and Psyche served to combine many lines of meditation already familiar to Marius into the ideal of a perfect imaginative love centred upon a type of beauty entirely flawless and clean an ideal which never wholly faded from his thoughts though he valued it at various times in different degrees the human body in its beauty as the highest potency of all the beauty of material objects seemed to him just then to be matter no longer but having taken celestial fire to assert itself as indeed the true though visible soul or spirit in things in contrast with that ideal in all the pure brilliancy and as it were in the happy light of youth and mourning and the springtide men's actual loves with which at many points the book brings one into close contact might appear to him like the general tenor of their lives to be somewhat mean and sordid the hiddenness of perfect things a shrinking mysticism a sentiment of diffidence like that expressed in Psyche's so tremulous hope concerning the child to be born of the husband she has never yet seen in the face of this little child at the least shall I apprehend thine in hoax altem parulo cognoscam faciem tuam the fatality which seems to haunt any signal beauty whether moral or physical as if it were in itself something illicit and isolating the suspicion and hatred it so often excites in the vulgar these were some of the impressions forming as they do a constant tradition of somewhat cynical pagan experience from Medusa and Helen downwards which the old story enforced on him a book like a person has its fortunes with one is lucky or unlucky in the precise moment of its falling in our way and often by some happy accident counts with us for something more than its independent value the metamorphosis of Apuleius coming to Marius just then figured for him as indeed the golden book he felt a sort of personal gratitude to its writer and saw in it doubtless far more than was really there for any other reader it occupied always a peculiar place in his remembrance never quite losing its power infrequent return to it for the revival of that first glowing impression its effect upon the elder youth was a more practical one it stimulated the literary ambition already so strong a motive with him by a signal example of success and made him more than ever an ardent, indefatigable student of words means or instrument of the literary art the secrets of utterance of expression itself of that through which alone any intellectual or spiritual power within one can actually take effect upon others to over awe or charm them to one side presented themselves to this ambitious lad in immediate connection with that desire for predominance for the satisfaction of which another might have relied acquisition and display of brilliant military qualities in him a fine instinctive sentiment of the exact value and power of words was conate with the eager longing for sway over his fellows he saw himself already a gallant and effective leader innovating or conservative as occasion might require in the rehabilitation of the mother tongue then fallen so tarnished and languid yet the sole object as he mused within himself of the only sort of patriotic feeling proper or possible for one born of slaves the popular speech was gradually departing from the form and rule of literary language a language always and increasingly artificial while the learned dialect was yearly becoming more and more barbarously pedantic the colloquial idiom on the other hand offered a thousand chance tossed gems of racy or picturesque expression rejected or at least ungathered by what claimed to be classical Latin the time was coming when neither the pedants nor the people would really understand Cicero though there were some indeed like this new writer Apuleus who departing from the custom of writing in Greek which had been a fashionable since the days of Hadrian had written in the vernacular the literary program which Flavian had already designed for himself would be a work then partly conservative or reactionary in its dealing with the instrument of the literary art partly popular and revolutionary asserting so to term them the rights of the proletariat of speech more than fifty years before suddenly himself an effective witness for the delicate power of the Latin tongue had said I am one of those who admire the ancients yet I do not, like some others underrate certain instances of genius which our own time to forward for it is not true that nature as if weary and defeat no longer produces what is admirable and he, Flavian would prove himself the true master of the opportunity thus indicated in his eagerness for a not too distant fame he dreamt over all that as the young Caesar may have dreamt of campaigns others might brutalize or neglect the native speech that true open field for charm and sway over men he would make of it a serious study weighing the precise power of every phrase and word as though it were precious metal disentangling the later associations and going back to the original and native sense of each restoring to full significance all it's wealth of latent figurative expression reviving or replacing it's outworn or tarnished images Latin literature and the Latin tongue were dying of routine and langa and what was necessary first of all was to re-establish the natural and direct relationship between thought and expression between the sensation and the term and restore to words their primitive power for words after all words manipulated with all his delicate force were to be the apparatus of a war for himself to be forcibly impressed in the first place and in the next to find the means of making visible to others that which was vividly apparent of lively interest to himself to the exclusion of all that was but middling, tame or only half-true even to him this scrupulousness of literary art actually awoke in Flavian for the first time a sort of chivalrous conscience what care for style what patience of execution what research for the significant tones of ancient idiom sonantia wereba et antiqua what stately and regular word-building gravis et decora constructio he felt the whole meaning of the sceptical plenis somewhat melancholy advice to one of his friends that he should seek in literature deliverance from mortality and there was everything in the nature and the training of Marius to make him a full participator in the hopes of such a new literary school with Flavian for its leader in the refinements of that curious spirit in its horror of profanities its fastidious sense of a correctness in external form there was something which ministered to the old ritual interest still surviving in him as if here indeed were involved a kind of sacred service to the mother tongue here then was the theory of euphorism as manifested in every age in which the literary conscience has been awakened to forgotten duties towards language towards the instrument of expression in fact it does but modify a little the principles of all effective expression at all times tis arts function to conceal itself ars est calare artem is a saying which exaggerated by inexact quotation has perhaps been oftenist and most confidently quoted by those who have had little literary or other art to conceal and from the very beginning of professional literature the labour of the file a labour in the case of Plato for instance or Virgil like that of the oldest of Goldsmiths as described by Apuleius enriching the work by far more than the weight of precious metal it removed has always had its function sometimes doubtless as in later examples of it this Roman euphorism determined at any cost to attain beauty in writing s calos grafin might lapse into its characteristic phopperies or mannerisms into the defects of its qualities in truth not wholly unpleasing perhaps or at least excusable when looked at but the toys so Cicero calls them the strictly congenial and appropriate toys of an assiduously cultivated age which could not help being polite critical self-conscious the mere love of novelty also had of course its part there as with the euphorism of the Elizabethan age and of the modern French romanticists its néologie were the ground of one of the favourite charges against it though indeed as regards these tricks of taste also there is nothing new but a quaint family likeness rather between the euphorists of successive ages here as elsewhere the power of fashion as it is called is but one minor form slight enough it may be yet distinctly symptomatic of that deeper yearning of the human nature towards ideal perfection continuous force in it and since in this direction too human nature is limited such fashions must necessarily reproduce themselves among other resemblances to later growths of euphorism its archaisms on the one hand and its neologies on the other the euphorism of the days of Marcus Aurelius had in the composition of verse its fancy for the refrain it was a snatch from the popular chorus something he had heard sounding all over the town of Pisa one April night one of the first bland and summer like nights of the year that Flavian had chosen for the refrain of a poem he was then pondering the pervigilium veneris the vigil or nocturne of Venus certain elderly counsellors filling what may be thought a constant part in the little tragicomedy which literature of playing in all ages would ask suspecting some affectation or unreality in that minute culture of form cannot those who have a thing to say say it directly why not be simple and broad like the old writers of Greece and this challenge had at least the effect of setting his thoughts at work on the intellectual situation as it lay between the children of the present and those earliest masters certainly the most wonderful the unique point about the Greek genius in literature as in everything else was the entire absence of imitation in its productions how had the burden of precedent laid upon every artist increased since then it was all around one that smoothly built world of old classical taste an accomplished fact with overwhelming authority on every part of one's work with no faddle on its own back yet so imperious towards those who came labouring after it, hell arse in its early freshness looked as distant from him even then as it does from ourselves there might seem to be no place left for novelty or originality place only for a patient an infinite faultlessness on this question too the historian passed through a world of curious art casuistries of self tormenting at the threshold of his work was poetic beauty a thing ever one and the same a type absolute or changing always with the soul of time itself did it depend upon the taste the peculiar trick of apprehension the fashion as we say of each successive age might one recover the old earlier sense of it that earlier manner in a masterly effort to recall all the complexities of the life, moral and intellectual of the earlier age to which it had belonged had there been really bad ages in art or literature were all ages even those earliest adventurous machutinal days in themselves equally poetical or unpoetical and poetry, the literary beauty poetic ideal always but a borrowed light upon men's actual life Homer had said Højd hotte de limenos polubenteos entos hickon to his dea men stelaan to tesanden nei melaini ekti kai autoi benon epihreg minusalases and how poetic the simple incident seemed told just that incident seemed, told just thus. Homer was always telling things after this manner, and one might think there had been no effort in it that here was but the almost mechanical transcript of a time, naturally, intrinsically poetic—a time in which one could hardly have spoken at all without ideal effect, or the sailors pulled down their boat without making a picture in the great style against the sky charged with marvels. Must not the mere prose of an age itself thus ideal have counted for more than half of Homer's poetry? Or might the closer student discover, even here, even in Homer, the really mediatorial function of the poet as between the reader and the actual matter of his experience, the poet waiting, so to speak, in an age which had felt itself trite and commonplace enough on his opportunity for the touch of golden alchemy, or at least for the pleasantly lighted side of things themselves? Might not another in one's own prosaic and used-up time, so uneventful as it had been through the long reign of these quiet antonynes, in like manner discover his ideal by due waiting upon it? Would not a future generation, looking back upon this under the power of the enchanted distance fallacy, find it ideal to view, in contrast with its own langa, the langa that for some reason, concerning which Augustine will one day have his view, seem to haunt men always? Had Homer even appeared unreal and affected in his poetic flight to some of the people of his own age, as seemed to happen with every new literature in turn? In any case, the intellectual conditions of early Greece had been how different from these, and a true literary tact would accept that difference in forming the primary conception of the literary function at a later time. Perhaps the utmost one could get by conscious effort in the way of a reaction or return to the conditions of an earlier and fresher age, would be but noitas, artificial artlessness, naiveté, and this quality too might have its measure of euphoristic charm, direct and sensible enough, though it must count in comparison with that genuine early Greek newness at the beginning, not as the freshness of the open fields, but only of a bunch of field-flowers in a heated room. There was meantime all this, on one side the old pagan culture, for us but a fragment, for him an accomplished yet present fact, still a living, united, organic whole. In the entirety of its art, its thought, its religions, its sagacious forms of polity, that so weighty authority it exercised on every point, being in reality only the measure of its charm for everyone. On the other side, the actual world, in all its eager self-assertion, with Flavin himself in his boundless animation there at the centre of the situation. From the natural defects, from the pettiness of his euphorism, his assiduous cultivation of manner, he was saved by the consciousness that he had a matter to present, very real, at least to him. That preoccupation of the dilettante, with what might seem mere details of form, after all, did but serve the purpose of bringing to the surface, sincerely, and in their integrity, certain strong personal intuitions, a certain vision or apprehension of things as really being, with important results, thus rather than thus. Intuitions which the artistic or literary faculty was called upon to follow, with the exactness of wax or clay, clothing the model within. Flavin, too, with his fine, clear mastery of the practically effective, had early laid hold of the principle as axiomatic in literature. That to know when oneself is interested is the first condition of interesting other people. It was a principle the forcible apprehension of which made him jealous and fastidious in the selection of his intellectual food. Often listless while others read or gazed diligently, never pretending to be moved out of mere complacence to other people's emotions, it served to foster in him a very scrupulous literary sincerity with himself. And it was this uncompromising demand for a matter, in all art, derived immediately from lively personal intuition, this constant appeal to individual judgment, which saved his euphorism, even at its weakest, from lapsing into mere artifice. Was the magnificent exordium of Lucretius addressed to the goddess Venus, the work of his earlier manhood, and designed originally to open an argument less persistently somber than that protest against the whole pagan heaven which actually follows it? It is certainly the most typical expression of a mood, still incident to the young poet, as a thing peculiar to his youth, when he feels the sentimental current setting forcibly along his veins, and so much as a matter of purely physical excitement, that he can hardly distinguish it from the animation of external nature, the upswelling of the seed in the earth and of the sap through the trees. Flavian, to whom, again, as to his later euphoristic kinsmen, old mythology, seemed as full of untried, unexpressed motives and interests as human life itself, had long been occupied with a kind of mystic hymn to the vernal principle of life in things, a composition shaping itself, little by little, out of a thousand dim perceptions, into singularly definite form, definite and firm as fine art in metal, thought Marius, for which, as I said, he had caught his refrain from the lips of the young men singing because they could not help it in the streets of Pisa. And as often this happens also with natures of genuinely poetic quality, those piecemeal beginnings came suddenly to harmonious completeness among the fortunate incidents, the physical heat and light, of one singularly happy day. It was one of the first hot days of March, the sacred day, on which, from Pisa, as from many another harbour on the Mediterranean, the ship of Isis went to sea, and everyone walked down to the shore side to witness the freighting of the vessel, its launching and final abandonment among the waves, as an object really devoted to the great goddess. That new rival, or double of ancient Venus, and like her, a favourite patroness of sailors. On the evening next before, all the world had been abroad to view the illumination of the river, the stately lines of building being reathed with hundreds of many coloured lamps. The young men had poured forth their chorus. Krasamet kwinunk kwa mawit, kwi kwa mawit krasamet. As they bore their torches through the yielding crowd, or rode their lantern boats up and down the stream, till far into the night, when heavy raindrops had driven the last lingerer's home. Morning broke, however, smiling and serene, and the long procession started bitimes. The river, curving slightly, with the smoothly paved streets on either side, between its low marble parapet and the fair dwelling-houses, formed the main highway of the city, and the pageant, accompanied throughout by innumerable lanterns and wax tapers, took its course up one of these streets, crossing the water by a bridge upstream, and down the other to the haven, every possible standing place, out of doors and within, being crowded with sightseers, of whom Marius was one of the most eager, deeply interested in finding the spectacle much as Apuleius had described it in his famous book. At the head of the procession, the master of ceremonies, quietly waving back the assistants, made way for a number of women, scattering perfumes. They were succeeded by a company of musicians, piping and twanging on instruments the strangest Marius had ever beheld, the notes of a hymn, narrating the first origin of this votive rite, to a choir of youths, who marched behind them singing it. The tire-women and other personal attendants of the great goddess came next, bearing the instruments of their ministry, and various articles from the sacred wardrobe, wrought of the most precious material, some of them with long ivory combs, plying their hands in wild yet graceful concert of movement, as they went, in devout mimicry of the toilet. Placed in their rear were the mirror-bearers of the goddess, carrying large mirrors of beaten brass or silver, turned in such a way as to reflect to the great body of worshipers who followed the face of the mysterious image as it moved on its way, and their faces to it, as though they were in fact advancing to meet the heavenly visitor. They comprehended a multitude of both sexes and of all ages, already initiated into the divine secret, clad in fair linen, the females veiled, the males with shining tonsures, and everyone carrying a cystrom, the richer sort of silver, a few very dainty persons, of fine gold, rattling the reeds with a noise like the jargon of innumerable birds and insects awakened from torpor and abroad in the spring sun. Then, born upon a kind of platform, came the goddess herself undulating above the heads of the multitude, as the bearers walked in mystic robe embroidered with the moon and stars, bordered gracefully with a fringe of real fruit and flowers, and with a glittering crown upon the head. The train of the procession consisted of the priests in long white vestments, close from head to foot, distributed into various groups, each bearing exposed aloft one of the sacred symbols of Isis, the corn fan, the golden asp, the ivory hand of equity, and among them the votive ship itself, carved and gilt, and adorned bravely with flags flying. Last of all walked the high priest, the people kneeling as he passed, to kiss his hand, in which were those well remembered roses. Marius followed with the rest to the harbour, where the mystic ship, lowered from the shoulders of the priest, was loaded with as much as it could carry of the rich spices and other costly gifts offered in great profusion by the worshipers, and thus launched at last upon the water, left the shore, crossing the harbour bar in the wake of a much stouter vessel than itself, with a crew of white-robed mariners, whose function it was at the appointed moment, finally to desert it upon the open sea. The remainder of the day was spent by most in parties on the water. Flavian and Marius sailed further than they had ever done before to a wild spot on the bay, the traditional site of a little Greek colony, which, having had its eager, stirring life at the time when Etruria was still a power in Italy, had perished in the age of the civil wars. In the absolute transparency of the air on this gracious day, an infinitude of detail from sea and shore reached the eye with sparkling clearness, as the two lads sped rapidly over the waves. Flavian at work suddenly, from time to time, with his tablets. They reached land at last. The coral-fishers had spread their nets on the sands, with a tumble-down of quaint, many-hued treasures, below a little shrine of Venus, fluttering and gay with the scarves and napkins and gilded shells which these people had offered to the image. Flavian and Marius sat down under the shadow of a mass of grey rock or ruin where the seagate of the Greek town had been, and talked of life in those old Greek colonies. Of this place, all that remained, besides those rude stones, was a handful of silver coins, each with a head of pure and archaic beauty, though a little cruel, perhaps, supposed to represent the siren, Ligea, whose tomb was formerly shown here. Only these, and an ancient song, the very strain which Flavian had recovered in those last months. They were records which spoke, certainly, of the charm of life within those walls, how strong must have been the tide of men's existence in that little republican town. So small that this circle of grey stones, of service now only by the moisture they gathered for the blue-flowering gensions among them, had been the line of its rampart. An epitome of all that was liveliest, most animated and adventurous, in the old Greek people of which it was an offshoot, it had enhanced the effect of these gifts by concentration within narrow limits. The band of devoted youth, hiraniotes, of the younger brothers devoted to the gods and whatever luck the gods might afford, because there was no room for them at home, went forth bearing the sacred flame from the mother hearth, itself a flame of power to consume the whole material of existence in clear light and heat, with no smouldering residue. The life of those vanished townsmen, so brilliant and revolutionary, applying so abundantly the personal qualities which alone, just then, Marius seemed to value, associated itself with the actual figure of his companion, standing there before him, his face enthusiastic with the sudden thought of all that, and struck him vividly as precisely the fitting opportunity for a nature like his, so hungry for control, for ascendancy over men. Marius noticed also, however, as high spirits flagged at last on the way home through the heavy dew of the evening, more than physical fatigue in Flavian, who seemed to find no refreshment in the coolness. There had been something feverish, perhaps, and like the beginning of sickness, about his almost forced gaity in this sudden spasm of spring, and by the evening of the next day he was lying with a burning spot on his forehead, stricken as was thought from the first by the terrible new disease. End of Chapter 6 Volume 1, Chapter 7 of Marius the Epicurean This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Marius the Epicurean by Walter Patta Chapter 7 A Pagan End For the fantastical colleague of the philosophic emperor, Marcus Aurelius, returning in triumph from the east, had brought in his train among the enemies of Rome one by no means a captive. People actually sickened at a sudden touch of the unsuspected foe, as they watched in dense crowds the pathetic or grotesque imagery of failure or success in the triumphal procession. And as usual, the plague brought with it a power to develop all pre-existent germs of superstition. It was by dishonour done to Apollo himself, said popular rumour, to Apollo the old titular divinity of pestilence, that the poisonous thing had come abroad. Pent up in a golden coffer, consecrated to the god, it had escaped in the sacrilegious plundering of his temple at Seleucia by the soldiers of Lucius Verus, after a traitorous surprise of that town and a cruel massacre. Certainly there was something which baffled all imaginable precautions and all medical science, in the suddenness with which the disease broke out simultaneously here and there, among both soldiers and citizens, even in places far remote from the main line of its march in the rear of the victorious army. It seemed to have invaded the whole empire, and some have even thought that, in a mitigated form, it permanently remained there. In Rome itself many thousands perished, and old authorities tell of farmsteads, whole towns, and even entire neighbourhoods, which from that time continued without inhabitants, and lapsed into wildness or ruin. Flavian lay at the open window of his lodging, with a fiery pang in the brain, fancying no covering thin or light enough to be applied to his body. His head being relieved after a while, there was distress at the chest. It was but the fatal course of the strange new sickness, under many disguises, travelling from the brain to the feet, like a material resident, weakening one after another of the organic centres, often, when it did not kill, depositing various degrees of life-long infirmity in this member or that. And after such descent, returning upwards again, now as a mortal coldness, leaving the entrenchments of the fortress of life overturned one by one behind it. Flavian lay there with the enemy at his breast, now in a painful cough, but relieved from that burning fever in the head, amid the rich scented flowers, rare pystom roses, and the like procured by Marius for his solace in a fancied convalescence. And word at intervals returned to labour at his verses, with a great eagerness to complete and transcribe the work, while Marius sat and wrote at his dictation one of the latest, but not the poorest, specimens of genuine Latin poetry. It was, in fact, a kind of nuptial hymn, which, taking its start from the thought of nature as the universal mother, celebrated the preliminary pairing and mating together of all fresh things in the hot and genial springtime, the immemorial nuptials of the soul of spring itself, and the brown earth, and was full of a delighted mystic sense of what passed between them in that fantastic marriage. That mystic burden was relieved at intervals by the familiar playfulness of the Latin verse writer in dealing with mythology, which, though coming so later day, had still a wonderful freshness in its old age. Amor has put his weapons by and will keep holiday. He was bid and go without apparel, that none might be wounded by his bow and arrows, but take care, in truth, he is none the less armed than usual, though he be all unclad. In the expression of all this, Flavian seemed, while making it his chief aim, to retain the opulent, many-syllable vocabulary of the Latin genius, at some points even to have advanced beyond it, in anticipation of wholly new laws of taste, as regards sound, a new range of sound itself. The peculiar resultant note, associating itself with certain other experiences of his, was to Marius like the foretaste of an entirely novel world of poetic beauty to come. Flavian had caught indeed something of the rhyming cadence, the sonorous organ music of the medieval Latin, and therewithal, something of its unction and mysticity of spirit. There was, in his work, along with the last splendour of the classical language, a touch almost prophetic of that transformed life it was to have in the rhyming middle age just about to dawn. The impression, thus forced upon Marius, connected itself with a feeling, the exact inverse of that known to everyone, which seems to say, you have been just here, just thus before. A feeling, in his case, not reminiscent but prescient of the future, which passed over him afterwards many times, as he came across certain places and people. It was, as if he detected there, the process of actual change to a wholly undreamed of and renewed condition of human body and soul, as if he saw the heavy yet decrepit old Roman architecture about him, rebuilding on an intrinsically better pattern. Could it have been actually on a new musical instrument that Flavian had first heard the novel accents of his verse? And still Marius noticed there, amid all its richness of expression and imagery, that firmness of outline he had always relished so much in the composition of Flavian. Yes, a firmness like that of some master of noble metalwork manipulating tenacious bronze or gold. Even now that haunting refrain with its impromptu variations from the throats of those strong young men came floating through the window. Kra samet kwinunk kwa mawit kwi kwa mawit kwa samet. Repeated Flavian, tremulously dictating yet one stands amore. What he was losing, his free hold of a soul and body, so fortunately endowed, the mere liberty of life above ground, those sunny mornings in the corn fields by the sea, as he recollected them one day, when the window was thrown open upon the early freshness. His sense of all this was from the first singularly near and distinct, yet rather as of something he was but debarred the use of for a time than finally bidding farewell to. That was while he was still with no very grave misgivings as to the issue of his sickness, and felt the sources of life still springing essentially unadulterate within him. From time to time indeed, Marius, laboring eagerly at the poem from his dictation, was haunted by a feeling of the triviality of such work just then. The recurrent sense of some obscure danger beyond the mere danger of death, vaguer than that, and by so much the more terrible, like the menace of some shadowy adversary in the dark, with whose mode of attack they had no acquaintance, disturbed him now and again through those hours of excited attention to his manuscript and to the purely physical wants of Flavian. Still during these three days there was much hope and cheerfulness and even jesting. Half-consciously Marius tried to prolong one or another relieving circumstance of the day, the preparations for rest and morning refreshment, for instance, sadly making the most of the little luxury of this or that, with something of the faint cheer of the mother who sets her last morsels before her famished child as for a feast, but really that he may eat it and die. On the afternoon of the seventh day he allowed Marius finally to put aside the unfinished manuscript. For the enemy, leaving the chest quiet at length, though much exhausted, had made itself felt with full power again in a painful vomiting, which seemed to shake his body asunder, with great consequent prostration. From that time the distress increased rapidly downwards. Omnia tumuero, vitae claustra la barbante, and soon the cold was mounting with sure pace from the dead feet to the head. And now Marius began more than to suspect what the issue must be, and henceforward could but watch with the sort of agonised fascination the rapid but systematic work of the destroyer, faintly relieving a little the mere accidents of the sharper forms of suffering. Flavian himself appeared, in full consciousness at last, in clear sighted deliberate estimate of the actual crisis, to be doing battle with his adversary. His mind surveyed with great distinctness the various suggested modes of relief. He must without fail get better, he would fancy, might he be removed to a certain place on the hills, where as a child he had once recovered from sickness, but found that he could scarcely raise his head from the pillow without giddiness. As if now surely for seeing the end he would set himself with an eager effort, and with that eager and angry look which is noted as one of the premonitions of death in this disease, to fashion out, without formal dictation, still a few more broken verses of his unfinished work, in hard-set determination defiant of pain to arrest this or that little drop at least from the river of sensuous imagery rushing so quickly past him. But at length delirium, symptom that the work of the plague was done, and the last resort of life yielding to the enemy, broke the coherent order of words and thoughts, and Marius' intent on the coming agony found his best hope in the increasing dimness of the patient's mind. In intervals of clearer consciousness the visible signs of cold, of sorrow, and desolation were very painful. No longer battling with the disease, he seemed, as it were, to place himself at the disposal of the victorious foe, dying passively, like some dumb creature, in hopeless acquiescence at last. That old, half-pleading petulance, unameable, yet, as it might seem, only needing conditions of life a little happier than they had actually been, to become refinement of affection. A delicate grace in its demand on the sympathy of others had changed in those moments of full intelligence to a clinging and tremulous gentleness as he lay on the very threshold of death, with a sharply contracted hand in the hand of Marius, to his almost surprised joy, winning him now to an absolutely self-forgetful devotion. There was a new sort of pleading in the misty eyes, just because they took such unsteady note of him, which made Marius feel as if guilty, anticipating thus a form of self-reproach, with which even the tenderest ministrant may be sometimes surprised when, at death, affectionate labour suddenly ceasing, leaves room for the suspicion of some failure of love, perhaps, at one or another minute point in it. Marius almost longed to take his share in the suffering that he might understand so the better how to relieve it. It seemed that the light of the lamp distressed the patient, and Marius extinguished it. The thunder which had sounded all day among the hills, with the heat not unwelcome to Flavian, had given way at nightfall to steady rain, and in the darkness Marius lay down beside him, faintly shivering now in the sudden cold, to lend him his own warmth, undeterred by the fear of contagion which had kept other people from passing near the house. At length about daybreak he perceived that the last effort had come with a revival of mental clearness, as Marius understood by the contact, light as it was, in recognition of him there. Is it a comfort, he whispered then, that I shall often come and weep over you? Not unless I be aware and hear you weeping. The sun shone out on the people going to work for a long hot day, and Marius was standing by the dead, watching, with deliberate purpose, to fix in his memory every detail that he might have this picture in reserve, should any hour of forgetfulness hereafter come to him with the temptation to feel completely happy again. A feeling of outrage, of resentment against nature itself, mingled with an agony of pity, as he noted on the now placid features a certain look of humility, almost abject, like the expression of a smitten child or animal, as of one fallen at last, after bewildering struggle, wholly under the power of a merciless adversary. From mere tenderness of soul he would not forget one circumstance in all that, as a man might piously stamp on his memory the death-scene of a brother wrongfully condemned to die against a time that may come. The fear of the corpse, which surprised him in his effort to watch by it through the darkness, was a hint of his own failing strength, just in time. The first night after the washing of the body he bore stoutly enough the tax which affection seemed to demand, throwing the incense from time to time on the little altar placed beside the beer. It was the recurrence of the thing, that unchanged outline below the coverlet, amid the silence in which the faintest rustle seemed to speak, that finally overcame his determination. Surely here, in this alienation, this sense of distance between them, which had come over him before, though in minor degree, when the mind of Flavian had wandered in his sickness, was another of the pains of death. Yet he was able to make all due preparations, and go through the ceremonies, shortened a little because of the infection, when, on a cloud this evening, the funeral procession went forth, himself, the flames of the pyre having done their work, carrying away the urn of the deceased in the folds of his toga, to its last resting place in the cemetery beside the highway, and so turning home to sleep in his own desolate lodging. What thought of others thoughts about one, could there be with the regret for so dear a head, fresh at one's heart?