 Volume 1 Chapter 12 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 Volume 1 Chapter 12 The Divinity that doth hedge a king. But, ah, my senus is eclad in clay, and great Augustus long ago is dead, and all the worth is ligan, wrapped in lead, that matter made for poets on to play. Marcus Aurelius, who, though he had little relish for them himself, had ever been willing to humour the taste of his people for magnificent spectacles, was received back to Rome with the lesser honours of the ovation conceded by the senate, so great was the public sense of deliverance, with even more than the laxity which had become its habit under imperial rule, for there had been no actual bloodshed in the late achievement. Clad in the civic dress of the chief Roman magistrate, and with a crown of myrtle upon his head, his colleague similarly attired walking beside him, he passed up to the capitol on foot, though in solemn procession along the sacred way, to offer sacrifice to the national gods. The victim, a goodly sheep, whose image we may still see between the pig and the ox of the Suo Wetaurilia, filleted and stole almost like some ancient canon of the church on a sculptured fragment in the forum, was conducted by the priests, clad in rich white vestments, and bearing their sacred utensils of massive gold, immediately behind a company of flute-players, led by the great choirmaster or conductor of the day, visibly techy or delighted according as the instruments he ruled with his tuning-rod, rose more or less adequately amid the difficulties of the way to the dream of perfect music in the soul within him. The vast crowd, including the soldiers of the triumphant army, now restored to wives and children, all alike in holiday whiteness, had left their houses early in the fine dry morning, in a real affection for the father of his country, to await the procession, the two princes having spent the preceding night outside the walls, at the old villa of the Republic. Marius, full of curiosity, had taken his position with much care and stood to see the world's masters pass by at an angle from which he could command the view of a great part of the processional route, sprinkled with fine yellow sand and punctiliously guarded from profane footsteps. The coming of the pageant was announced by the clear sound of the flutes, heard at length above the acclamations of the people, Salve Imperator, Diite Servent, shouted in regular time over the hills. It was on the central figure, of course, that the whole attention of Marius was fixed from the moment when the procession came in sight, preceded by the lictors with gilded faskeys, the imperial image-bearers, and the pages carrying lighted torches. A band of knights among whom was Cornelius in complete military array following. Amply swathed about in the folds of a richly worked toga, after a manner now long since become obsolete with meaner persons, Marius beheld a man of about five and forty years of age, with prominent eyes, eyes which, although demurely downcast during this essentially religious ceremony, were by nature broadly and benignantly observant. He was still in the main, as we see him, in the busts which represent his gracious and courtly youth, when Hadrian had playfully called him not Verus, after the name of his father, but Verisimus, for his candor of gaze, and the bland capacity of the brow, which below the brown hair clustering thickly as of old, shone out low, broad, and clear, and still without a trace of the trouble of his lips. You saw the brow of one who, amid the blindness or perplexity of the people about him, understood all things clearly. The dilemma to which his experience so far had brought him between chance with meek resignation and providence with boundless possibilities and hope, being for him at least distinctly defined. That outward serenity which he valued so highly as a point of manner or expression not unworthy the care of a public minister, outward symbol it might be thought of the inward religious serenity, it had been his constant purpose to maintain, was increased today by his sense of the gratitude of his people, that his life had been one of such gifts and blessings as made his person seem in very deed divine to them. Yet the cloud of some reserved internal sorrow passing from time to time into an expression of fatigue and effort of loneliness amid the shouting multitude might have been detected there by the more observant, as if the sagacious hint of one of his officers, the soldiers can't understand you, they don't know Greek, were applicable always to his relationships with other people. The nostrils and mouth seemed capable almost of peevishness, and Marius noted in them, as in the hands and in the spare body generally, what was new to his experience, something of asceticism, as we say, of a bodily gymnastic, by which, although it told pleasantly in the clear blue humours of the eye, the flesh had scarcely been an equal gainer with the spirit. It was hardly the expression of the healthy mind in the healthy body, but rather of a sacrifice of the body to the soul, its needs and aspirations, that Marius seemed to divine in this assiduous student of the Greek sages, a sacrifice in truth far beyond the demands of their very saddest philosophy of life. Dignify thyself with modesty and simplicity for thine ornaments, had been ever a maxim with this dainty and hybrid stoic, who still thought manners a true part of morals, according to the old sense of the term, and who regrets now and again that he cannot control his thoughts equally well with his countenance. That outward composure was deepened during the salamnities of this day by an air of pontifical abstraction, which, though very far from being pride, nay a sort of humility rather, yet gave to himself an air of unapproachableness, and to his whole proceeding in which every minutest act was considered the character of a ritual. Certainly there was no haughtiness, social, moral, or even philosophic in Aurelius, who had realised, under more trying conditions perhaps than any one before, that no element of humanity could be alien from him. Yet, as he walked today, the centre of ten thousand observers, with eyes discreetly fixed on the ground, veiling his head at times, and muttering very rapidly the words of the supplications, there was something many spectators may have noted as a thing new in their experience, for Aurelius, unlike his predecessors, took all this with absolute seriousness. The doctrine of the sanctity of kings, that, in the words of Tacitus, princes are as gods, principes instar de ormesse, seem to have taken a novel because a literal sense. For Aurelius, indeed, the old legend of his descent from Numa, who had talked with the gods, meant much. Attached in very early years to the service of the altars, like many another noble youth, he was observed to perform all his sacerdotal functions with a constancy and exactness unusual at that age, was soon a master of the sacred music, and had all the forms and ceremonies by heart. Even now, as the emperor, who had not only a vague divinity about his person, but was actually the chief religious functionary of the state, recited from time to time the forms of invocation, he needed not the help of the prompter, or ceremoniarius, who then approached to assist him by whispering the appointed words in his ear. It was that pontifical abstraction which then impressed itself on Marius as the leading outward characteristic of Aurelius, though to him alone perhaps in that vast crowd of observers it was no strange thing but a matter he had understood from of old. Some fanciful writers have assigned the origin of these triumphal processions to the mythic pumps of Dionysus, after his conquests in the East. The very word triumph being, according to this supposition, only Triambos, the Dionysiac hymn, and certainly the younger of the two imperial brothers, who, with the effect of a strong contrast, walked beside Aurelius and shared the honors of the day, might well have reminded people of the delicate Greek god of flowers and wine. This new conqueror of the East was now about thirty-six years old, but with his scrupulous care for all the advantages of his person, and a soft curling beard powdered with gold, looked many years younger. One result of the more genial element in the wisdom of Aurelius had been that, amid most difficult circumstances, he had known throughout life how to act in union with persons of character very alien from his own. To be more than loyal to the colleague, the younger brother in empire, he had too lightly taken to himself five years before, then an uncorrupt youth, skilled in manly exercises, and fitted for war. When Aurelius, thanks to the gods, that a brother had fallen to his lot, whose character was a stimulus to the proper care of his own, one sees that this could only have happened in the way of an example, putting him on his guard against insidious faults. But it is with sincere amiability that the imperial writer, who was indeed little used to be ironical, adds that the lively respect and affection of the junior had often gladdened him. To be able to make his use of the flower when the fruit perhaps was useless or poisonous, that was one of the practical successes of his philosophy, and his people noted with a blessing the concord of the two Augustae. The younger certainly possessed in full measure that charm of a constitutional freshness of aspect which may defy for a long time extravagant or oaring habits of life. A physiognomy healthy looking, cleanly, and firm, which seemed unassociable with any form of self-torment, and made one think of the muzzle of some young hound or row such as human beings invariably like to stroke. A physiognomy, in effect, with all the goodliness of animalism of the finer sort, though still wholly animal. The charm was that of the blonde head, the unshrinking gaze, the warm tints, neither more nor less than one may see every English summer, in youth, manly enough, and with the stuff which makes brave soldiers, in spite of the natural kinship it seems to have with playthings gay flowers. But in 18 Lucius Verus there was that more than womanly fondness for fond things, which had made the atmosphere of the old city of Antioch heavy with centuries of voluptuousness a poison to him. He had come to love his delicacies best out of season, and would have gilded the very flowers. But with a wonderful power of self- obliteration the elder brother at the capital had directed his procedure successfully, and allowed him, become now also the husband of his daughter Lucilla, the credit of a conquest, though Verus had certainly not returned a conqueror over himself. He had returned, as we know, with the plague in his company, along with many another strange creature of his folly, and when the people saw him publicly feeding his favourite horse, Fleet, with almonds and sweet grapes, wearing the animal's image in gold, and finally building it a tomb, they felt with some unsentimental misgiving that he might revive the manners of Nero. What if, in the chances of war, he should survive the protecting genius of that elder brother? He was all himself to-day, and it was with much wistful curiosity that Marius regarded him. For Lucius Verus was indeed but the highly expressive type of a class, the true son of his father, adopted by Hadrian. Lucius Verus, the elder, also, had had the like-strange capacity for misusing the adornments of life with a masterly grace, as if such misusing were, in truth, the quite adequate occupation of an intelligence powerful but distorted by cynical philosophy, or some disappointment of the heart. It was almost a sort of genius of which there had been instances in the imperial purple. It was to ascend the throne a few years later, in the person of one, now a hopeful little lad at home in the palace, and it had its following, of course, among the wealthy youth of Rome, who concentrated no inconsiderable force of shrewdness and tact upon minute details of attire and manner, as upon the one thing needful. Certainly flowers were pleasant to the eye. Such things even had their sober use as making the outside of human life superficially attractive, and thereby promoting the first steps towards friendship and social amity. But what precise place could there be for Verus and his peculiar charm in that wisdom, that order of divine reason reaching from end to end strongly and sweetly disposing all things, from the vision of which Aurelius came down so tolerant of persons like him. Into such vision Marius too was certainly well fitted to enter, yet noting the actual perfection of Lucius Verus after his kind, his undeniable achievement of the select in all minor things, felt, though with some suspicion of himself, that he entered into and could understand this other so dubious sort of character also. There was a voice in the theory he had brought to Rome with him, which whispered, Nothing is either great nor small, as there were times when he could have thought that, as the grammarians or the artists' ardour of soul may be satisfied by the perfecting of the theory of a sentence or the adjustment of two colours, so his own life also might have been fulfilled by an enthusiastic quest after perfection, say, in the flowering and folding of a toga. The emperors had burnt incense before the image of Jupiter, arrayed in its most gorgeous apparel amid sudden shouts from the people of Salway Imperator, turned now from the living princes to the deity as they discerned his countenance through the great open doors. The imperial brothers had deposited their crowns of myrtle on the richly embroidered lapcloth of the god, and with their chosen guests sat down to a public feast in the temple itself. There followed what was, after all, the great event of the day, an appropriate discourse, a discourse almost wholly de-contemptu mundi, delivered in the presence of the assembled senate by the emperor Aurelius, who had thus, on certain rare occasions, condescended to instruct his people with the double authority of a chief pontiff and a laborious student of philosophy. In those lesser honors of the ovation there had been no attendant slave behind the emperors to make mark of their effulgence as they went, and it was as if with the discretion proper to a philosopher and in fear of a jealous nemesis he had determined himself to protest in time against the vanity of all outward success. The senate was assembled to hear the emperor's discourse in the vast hall of the Couriat Eulia, a crowd of high-bred youths idled around or on the steps before the doors with the marvellous toilets Marius had noticed in the Via Nova, in attendance as usual to learn by observation the minute points of senatorial procedure. Marius had already some acquaintance with them, and passing on found himself suddenly in the presence of what was still the most august assembly the world had seen. Under Aurelius, ever full of veneration for this ancient traditional guardian of public religion, the senate had recovered all its old dignity and independence. Among its members many hundreds in number, visibly the most distinguished of them all, Marius noted the great sophists and rhetoricians of the day in all their magnificence. The antique character of their attire and the ancient mode of wearing it, still surviving with them, added to the imposing character of their persons, while they sat with their staves of ivory in their hands on their coral chairs. Almost the exact pattern of the chair still used in the Roman church when a bishop pontificates at the divine offices. Tranquil and unmoved, with a majesty that seemed divine, as Marius thought, like the old gall of the invasion. The rays of the early November sunset slanted full upon the audience, and made it necessary for the officers of the court to draw the purple curtains over the windows, adding to the solemnity of the scene. In the depth of those warm shadows surrounded by her ladies the impressed Faustina was seated to listen. The beautiful Greek statue of victory, which since the days of Augustus had presided over the assemblies of the senate, had been brought into the hall and placed near the chair of the emperor, who, after rising, to perform a brief sacrificial service in its honour, bowing reverently to the assembled fathers left and right, took his seat and began to speak. There was a certain melancholy grandeur in the very simplicity or triteness of the theme, as it were the very quintessence of all the old Roman epitaphs, of all that was monumental in that city of tombs, layer upon layer of dead things and people. As if in the very fervour of disillusion he seemed to be composing porsper epigrapas cronon chaiholon etnon, the sepulchral title of ages and whole peoples, nay, the very epitaph of the living Rome itself. The grandeur of the ruins of Rome, heroism in ruin, it was under the influence of an imaginative anticipation of this that he appeared to be speaking. And though the impression of the actual greatness of Rome on that day was but enhanced by the strain of contempt, falling with an accent of pathetic conviction from the emperor himself, and gaining from his pontifical pretensions the authority of a religious intimation, yet the curious interest of the discourse lay in this, that Marius, for one, as he listened, seemed to foresee a grass-grown forum, the broken ways of the capital, and the Palatine Hill itself in humble occupation. That impression connected itself with what he had already noted of an actual change, even then coming over Italian scenery. Throughout he could trace something of a humour into which stoicism at all times tends to fall, the tendency to cry, abase yourselves. There was here the almost inhuman impassibility of one who had thought too closely on the paradoxical aspect of the love of posthumous fame. With the ascetic pride, which lurks under all Platonism, resultant from its opposition of the seen to the unseen, as falsehood to truth, the imperial stoic, like his true descendant, the hermit of the Middle Age, was ready in no friendly humour to mock there in its narrow bed, the corpse which had made so much of itself in life. Marius could but contrast all that with his own syrinaic eagerness, just then to taste and see and touch, reflecting on the opposite issues deducible from the same text. The world within me and without flows away like a river, he had said, therefore let me make the most of what is here and now. The world and the thinker upon it are consumed like a flame, said Aurelius, therefore will I turn away my eyes from vanity, renounce, withdraw myself alike from all affections. He seemed tacitly to claim as a sort of personal dignity that he was very familiarly versed in this view of things and could discern a death's head everywhere. Now and again Marius was reminded of the saying that, with the stoics all people are the vulgar, save themselves, and at times the orator seemed to have forgotten his audience and to be speaking only to himself. Art thou in love with men's praises, get thee into the very soul of them and see, see what judges they be, even in those matters which concern themselves. Wouldst thou have their praise after death, bethink thee, that they who shall come hereafter, and with whom thou wouldst survive by thy great name, will be but as these whom here thou hast found so hard to live with. For of a truth the soul of him who is a flutter upon renown after death presents not this a right to itself, that of all whose memory he would have each one will likewise very quickly depart, until memory herself be put out, as she journeys on by means of such as are themselves on the wing, but for a while, and are extinguished in their turn. Making so much of those thou wilt never see, it is as if thou wouldst have had those who were before thee discourse fair things concerning thee. To him, indeed, whose wit hath been wetted by true doctrine, that well-worn sentence of Homer suffices to guard him against regret and fear. Like the race of leaves the race of man is, the wind in autumn stroves the earth with old leaves, then the spring the woods with new endows. Leaves, little leaves, thy children, thy flatters, thy enemies, leaves in the wind, those who would devote thee to darkness, who scorn or scorn thee here, even as they also whose great fame shall outlast them. For all these, and the like of them, are born indeed in the spring season. Aeros epigignatai hore, and soon a wind hath scattered them, and thereafter the wood peopleth itself again with another generation of leaves. And what is common to all of them is but the littleness of their lives, and yet wouldst thou love and hate, as if these should continue for ever. In a little while, thine eyes also will be closed, and he on whom thou perchance hast leaned thyself be himself a burden upon another. Bethinkly often of the swiftness with which the things that are, or are even now coming to be, are swept past thee, that the very substance of them is but the perpetual motion of water, that there is almost nothing which continueeth of that bottomless depth of time so close at thy side, folly, to be lifted up or sorrowful or anxious by reasons of things like these. Think of infinite matter and thy portion, how tinier particle of it, of infinite time and thine own brief point there, of destiny and the jot thou art in it, and yield thyself readily to the wheel of clotho to spin of thee what web she will. As one casting a ball from his hand, the nature of things hath had its aim with every man, not as to the ending only, but the first beginning of his course and the passage dither, and hath the ball any profit of its rising, or loss as it descendeth again or in its fall, or the bubble as it groweth or breaketh on the air, or the flame of the lamp from the beginning to the end of its brief story. All but at this present that future is, in which nature, who disposeth all things in order, will transform whatsoever thou now seeest, fashioning from its substance somewhat else, and there from somewhat else, in its turn, lest the world grow old. We are such stuff as dreams are made of, disturbing dreams. Awake then, and see thy dream as it is, in comparison with that air while it seemed to thee. And as for me, especially if it were well to mind those many mutations of empire in time past, therein peeping also upon the future, which must needs be of like species with what hath been, continuing ever within the rhythm and number of things which really are, so that in forty years one may note of man, and of his ways, little less than in a thousand. Ah, from this higher place, look we down upon the shipwrecks of time. Consider, for example, how the world went under the emperor of Espaisian. They are married and given in marriage. They breed children. Love hath its way with them. They heap up riches for others, or for themselves. They are murmuring at things as then they are. They are seeking for great place, crafty, flattering, suspicious, waiting upon the death of others. Festivals, business, war, sickness, dissolution, and now their whole life is no longer anywhere at all. Pass on to the reign of Trajan. All things continue the same, and that life also is no longer anywhere at all. Ah, but look again and consider one after another, as it were the sepulchral inscriptions of all peoples and times, according to one pattern. What multitudes, after their utmost striving, a little afterwards were dissolved again into their dust. Think again of life as it was far off in the ancient world, as it must be when we shall be gone, as it is now among the wild heathen. How many have never heard your names and mine, or will soon forget them. How soon may those who shout my name today begin to revile it, because glory and the memory of men, and all things beside, are but vanity, a sand heap under the senseless wind, the barking of dogs, the quarrelling of children, weeping incontinently upon their laughter. This hasteth to be, that other to have been, of that which now cometh to be, even now, somewhat hath been extinguished, and wilt thou make thy treasure of any one of these things? It were as if one set his love upon the swallow, as it passeth out of sight through the air. Bethink thee often in all contensions, public and private, of those whom men have remembered by reason of their anger and vehement spirit, those famous rages and the occasions of them, the great fortunes and misfortunes of men's strife of old. What are they all now, and the dust of their battles? Dust and ashes indeed, a fable, a mythus, and not so much as that. Yes, keep those before thine eyes and look, this or that, the like of which happeneth to thee, so hardly, were so quarrelous, so agitated, and where again are they? Wouldst thou have it not otherwise with thee? Consider how quickly all things vanish away, their bodily structure into the general substance, the very memory of them into that great gulf and abysm of past thoughts. Art is on a tiny space of earth, thou art creeping through life, a pygmy soul carrying a dead body to its grave. Let death put thee upon the consideration both of thy body and thy soul, what an atom of all matter hath been distributed to thee, what a little particle of the universal mind. Turn thy body about, and consider what thing it is, and that which old age and lust and the langa of disease can make of it. Or come to its substantial causal qualities, its very type, contemplate that in itself, apart from the accidents of matter, and then measure also the span of time for which the nature of things at the longest will maintain that special type. Nay, in the very principles and first constituents of things, corruption hath its part, so much dust, humour, stench, and scraps of bone. Consider that thy marbles are but the earth's callosities, thy gold and silver its feces, this silk and robe, but a worm's bedding, and thy purple and unclean fish. Ah, and thy life's breath is not otherwise, as it passeth out of matters like these into the like of them again. For the one soul in things, taking matter like wax in the hands, moulds and remolds, how hastily beast and plant and the babe in turn, and that which dyeth hath not slipped out of the order of nature, but remaining therein hath also its changes there, disparting into those elements of which nature herself, and thou too, art compacted. She changes without murmuring. The oaken chest falls to pieces with no more complaining than when the carpenter fitted it together. If one told thee certainly, that on the morrow thou shouldst die, or at the furthest on the day after, it would be no great matter to thee to die on the day after tomorrow, rather than tomorrow, strive to think it a thing no greater that thou will die not tomorrow but a year or two years or ten years from today. I find that all things are now as they were in the days of our buried ancestors, all things sordid in their elements, trite by long usage, and yet ephemeral. How ridiculous, then, how like a countryman in town, is he who wonders at ought. Doth the sameness, the repetition of the public shows, weary thee? Even so, doth that likeness of events in the spectacle of the world? And so must it be with thee to the end. For the wheel of the world hath ever the same motion, upward and downward, from generation to generation. When when shall time give place to eternity? If there be things which trouble thee, thou canst put them away, in as much as they have there being but in thine own notion concerning them. Consider what death is, and how, if one does but detach from it the appearances, the notions that hang about it, resting the eye upon it, as in itself it really is. It must be thought of but as an effect of nature, and that man but child whom an effect of nature shall affright. Nay, not function and effect of nature only, but a thing profitable also to herself. To cease from action, the ending of thine effort to think and do, there is no evil in that. Turn thy thought to the ages of man's life, boyhood, youth, maturity, old age. The change in every one of these also is a dying, but evil nowhere. Thou climidst into the ship. Thou hast made thy voyage, and touched the shore. Go forth now. Be it into some other life, the divine breath is everywhere, even there. Be it into forgetfulness, for ever. At least thou wilt rest from the beating of sensible images upon thee, from the passions which pluck thee this way and that, like an unfeeling toy, from those long marches of the intellect, from thy toilsome ministry to flesh. Art thou yet more than dust and ashes and bare bone, a name only, or not so much as that, which also is but whispering and a resonance kept alive from mouth to mouth of dying objects who have hardly known themselves, how much less thee dead so long ago. When thou lookest upon a wise man, a lawyer, a captain of war, think upon another gone. When thou seeest thine own face in the glass, call up there before thee one of thine ancestors, one of those old caesars, lo, everywhere, thy double before thee. Thereon let the thought occur to thee, and where are they, anywhere at all, for ever, and thou thyself, how long art thou blind to that thou art, thy matter, how temporal, and thy function, the nature of thy business, yet tarry at least, till thou hast assimilated even these things to thine own proper essence, as a quick fire, turn it into heat and light, whatsoever be cast upon it. As words once in use are antiquated to us, so is it with the names that were once on all men's lips, Camillus, Volesus, Leonatus, then in a little while Scipio and Cato, and then Augustus, and then Hadrian, and then Antoninus Pius. How many great physicians who lifted wise brows at other men's sick beds have sickened and died. Those wise Caldeans who foretold as a great matter another man's last hour have themselves been taken by surprise, I and all those others in their pleasant places, those who doted on a capri I like Tiberius, on their gardens, on the baths, Pythagoras and Socrates who reasoned so closely upon immortality. Alexander, who used the lives of others as though his own should last forever, he and his mule driver alike now, one upon another. Well, nigh the whole court of Antoninus is extinct. Panthea and Pergamus sit no longer beside the sepulchre of their lord. The watchers over Hadrian's dust have slipped from his sepulchre. It were gesting to stay longer. Did they sit there still with the dead feel it, or feeling it, be glad, or glad hold those watches forever? The time must come when they too shall be aged men and aged women, and decease and fail from their places. And what shift were there then for imperial service? This too is but the breath of the tomb and a skinful of dead men's blood. Think again of those inscriptions which belong not to one soul only but to whole families. Escatos to Idilgenus he was the last of his race, nigh of the burial of whole cities, Helike Pompeii of others whose very burial place is unknown. Thou has been a citizen in this wide city count not for how long, nor repine, since that which sends thee hence is no unrighteous judge, no tyrant but nature who brought the hither as when a player leaves the stage at the bidding of the conductor who hired him. Sayest thou I have not played five acts true, but in human life three acts only make sometimes an entire play. That is the composer's business not thine. Withdraw thyself with a good will for that too hath perchance a good will see from thy part. The discourse ended almost in darkness, the evening having set in somewhat suddenly with a heavy fall of snow. The torches made ready to do him a useless honor were of real service now as the emperor was solemnly conducted home one man rapidly catching light from another, a long stream of moving lights across the white forum up the great stairs to the palace. And in effect that night winter began the hardest that had been known for a lifetime. The wolves came from the mountains and, led by the carrion sent devoured the dead bodies which had been hastily buried during the plague and emboldened by their meal crept before the short day was well past over the walls of the farm yards of the campania. The eagles were seen driving the flocks of smaller birds across the dusky sky. Only in the city itself the winter was all the brighter for the contrast among those who could pay for light and warmth. The habit makers made a great sale of the spoil of all such furry creatures as had escaped wolves and eagles for presents at the satanalia and at no time had the winter roses from carthage seemed more lustrously yellow and red. End of chapter 12 Volume 1, Chapter 13 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 13 The Mistress and Mother of Palaces After that sharp brief winter the sun was already at work softening leaf and bud as you might feel by faint sweetness in the air. But he did his work behind an evenly white sky against which the abode of the Caesars, its cypresses and bronze roofs seemed like a picture in beautiful but melancholy colour as Marius climbed the long flights of steps to be introduced to the emperor of Cornelius. Attired in the newest mode his legs wound in daintifascii of white leather with the heavy gold ring of the ingenuous and in his toga of ceremony he still retained all his country freshness of complexion. The eyes of the golden youth of Rome were upon him as the chosen friend of Cornelius and the destined servant of the emperor, but not because of his habitual reserve of manner he had become the fashion even among those who felt instinctively the irony which lay beneath that remarkable self-possession as of one taking all things with a difference from other people perceptible in voice, in expression and even in his dress. It was in truth the air of one who entering vividly into life and relishing to the full the delicacies of its intercourse yet feels all the while from the point of view of an ideal philosophy that he is but conceding reality to suppositions choosing of his own will to walk in a daydream of the illusiveness of which he at least is aware. In the house of the chief chamberlain Marius waited for the due moment of admission to the emperor's presence. He was admiring the peculiar decoration of the walls covered like rich old red leather. In the midst of one of them was depicted under a trellis of fruit you might have gathered the figure of a woman knocking at a door with wonderful reality of perspective. Then the summons came and in a few minutes the etiquette of the imperial household being still a simple matter he had passed the curtains which divided the central hall of the palace into three parts three degrees of approach to the imperial person and was speaking to Aurelius himself not in Greek in which the emperor oftenest conversed with the learned but more familiarly in Latin adorned however or disfigured by many a Greek phrase as now and again French phrases have made the adornment of fashionable English. It was with real kindliness that Marcus Aurelius looked upon Marius as a youth of great attainments letters and philosophy and he liked also his serious expression being as we know a believer in the doctrine of physiognomy that as he puts it not love only but every other affection of man's soul looks out very plainly from the window of the eyes. The apartment in which Marius found himself was of ancient aspect and richly decorated with the favorite toys of two or three generations of imperial collectors now finally revised by the high connoisseurship of the Stoic emperor himself though destined not much longer to remain together there. It is the repeated boast of Aurelius that he had learned from old Antoninus Pius to maintain authority without the constant use of guards in a robe woven by the handmaids of his own consort with no processional lights and that a prince may shrink himself almost into the figure of a private gentleman. And yet again as at his first sight of him Marius was struck by the profound religiousness of the surroundings of the imperial presence the effect might have been due in part to the very simplicity the discreet and scrupulous simplicity of the central figure in this splendid abode but Marius could not forget that he saw before him not only the head of the Roman religion but one who might actually have claimed something like divine worship had he cared to do so though the fantastic pretensions of Caligula had brought some contempt on that claim which had become almost a jest under the ungainly Claudius yet from Augustus downwards a vague divinity had seemed to surround the Caesars even in this life and the peculiar character of Aurelius at once a ceremonious polytheist never forgetful of his pontifical calling and a philosopher whose mystic speculation encircled him with the sort of saintly halo had restored to his person without his intending it something of that divine prerogative or prestige though he would never allow the immediate dedication of Aultus to himself yet the image of Aurelius, his spirituality or celestial counterpart was placed among those of the deified princes of the past and his family including Faustina and the young Commodus was spoken of as the Holy or Divine House many a Roman courtier agreed with the barbarian chief who after contemplating a predecessor of Aurelius withdrew from his presence with the exclamation he had seen a god today the very roof of his house rising into a pediment or gable like that of the sanctuary of a god the laurels on either side its doorway the chaplet of oak leaves above seemed to designate the place for religious veneration and notwithstanding all this the household of Aurelius was singularly modest with none of the wasteful expense of palaces after the fashion the palatial dignity being felt only in a peculiar sense of order the absence of all that was casual of vulgarity and discomfort a merely official residence of his predecessors the palatine had become the favourite dwelling place of Aurelius its many coloured memories suiting perhaps his pensive character and the crude splendours of Nero and Hadrian being now subdued by time the windowless Roman abode must have had much of what to a modern would be gloom how did the children one wonders endure houses with so little escape for the eye into the world outside Aurelius who had altered little else choosing to live there in a genuine homeliness had shifted and made the most of the level lights and broken out a quite medieval window here and there and the clear daylight fully appreciated by his youthful visitor made pleasant shadows among the objects of the imperial collection some of these indeed by reason of their Greek simplicity and grace themselves shone out like spaces of a purer, early light amid the splendours of the Roman manufacture though he looked, thought Marius like a man who did not sleep enough he was abounding and bright today after one of those wittiless headaches which since boyhood had been the thorn in his side challenging the pretensions of his philosophy to fortify one in humble endureances at the first moment to Marius remembering the spectacle of the emperor in ceremony it was almost bewildering to be in private conversation with him there was much in the philosophy of Aurelius much consideration of mankind at large of his qualities, aggregates and generalities after the stoic manner which on a nature less rich than his might have acted as an inducement to care for people in inverse proportion to their nearness to him that has sometimes been the result of the stoic cosmopolitanism Aurelius however determined to beautify by all means great or little a doctrine which had in it some potential sourness had brought all the quickness of his intelligence and long years of observation to bear on the conditions of social intercourse he had early determined not to make business an excuse to decline the offices of humanity not to pretend to be too much occupied with important affairs to concede what life with others may hourly demand and with such success that in an age which had made much of the finer points of that intercourse it was felt that the mere honesty of his conversation was more pleasing than other men's flattery His agreeableness to his young visitor today was in truth a blossom of the same wisdom which had made of Lucius Verus really a brother the wisdom of not being exigent with men any more than with fruit trees it is his own favourite figure beyond their nature and there was another person still nearer to him regarding whom this wisdom became a marvel of equity of charity the centre of a group of princely children in the same apartment with Aurelius ameared all the refined intimacies of a modern home sat the empress Faustina warming her hands over a fire with her long fingers lighted up red by the glowing coals of the brazier Marius looked close upon the most beautiful woman in the world who was also the great paradox of the age among her boys and girls as has been truly said of the numerous representations of her in art so in life she had the air of one curious restless to enter into conversation with the first comer she had certainly the power of stimulating a very ambiguous sort of curiosity about herself and Marius found this enigmatic point in her expression that even after seeing her many times he could never precisely recall her features in absence the lad of six years looking older who stood beside her impatiently plucking a rose to pieces over the hearth was in outward appearance his father the young verisimus over again but with a certain feminine length of feature and with all his mother's alertness or license of gaze he looked at every door and window of the imperial house regarding the adulterers who knocked at them or quietly left their lovers garlands there was not that likeness of the husband in the boy beside her really the effect of a shameful magic in which the blood of the murdered gladiator his true father had been an ingredient were the tricks for deceiving husbands which the roman poet describes really hers was not an efficient school of all the arts of furtive love or was the husband too aware like everyone beside were certain sudden deaths which happened there really the work of apoplexy or the plague the man whose ears whose soul those rumours were meant to penetrate was however faithful to his sanguine and optimist philosophy to his determination that the world should be to him for a reason preferred to conceive it and the life's journey aurelius had made so far though involving much moral and intellectual loneliness had been ever in affectionate and helpful contact with other wayfarers very unlike himself since his days of earliest childhood in the latrine gardens he seemed to himself blessing the gods for it after deliberate survey to have been always surrounded by kinsmen friends, servants of exceptional virtue from the great stoic idea that we are merely fellow citizens of one city he had derived a tenderer a more equitable estimate than was common amongst stoics of the eternal shortcomings of men and women considerations that might tend to the sweetening of his temper it was his daily care to store away with a kind of philosophic pride in the thought that no one took more good-naturedly than he the oversights of his neighbours for had not Plato taught it was not paradox but simple truth of experience that if people sin it is because they know no better and are under the necessity of their own ignorance hard to himself he seemed at times doubtless to decline too softly upon unworthy persons actually he came thereby upon many a useful instrument the empress Faustina he would seem at least to have kept by a constraining affection from becoming altogether what most people have believed her and one in her we must take him at his word in the thoughts abundantly confirmed by letters on both sides in his correspondence with Cornelius fronto a consolation the more secure perhaps because misknown of others was the secret of her actual blamelessness after all with him who has at least screened her name at all events the one thing quite certain about her besides her extraordinary beauty is her sweetness to himself no the wise who had made due observation on the trees of the garden would not expect to gather grapes of thorns or fig trees and he was the vine putting forth his genial fruit by natural law again and again after his kind whatever use people might make of it certainly his actual presence never lost its power and Faustina was glad in it today the birthday of one of her children a boy who stood at her knee holding in his fingers tenderly a tiny silver trumpet one of his birthday gifts for my part unless I conceive my hurt to be such I have no hurt at all boasts the would-be apathetic emperor and how I care to conceive of the thing rests with me yet when his children fall sick or die this pretence breaks down and he is broken hearted and one of the charms of certain of his letters still extant is his reference to those childish sicknesses on my return to lorium he writes I found my little lady Dom Nulam Mayam in a fever and again in a letter to one of the most serious of men you will be glad to hear that our little one is better and running about the room the young comodus had departed from the chamber anxious to witness the exercises of certain gladiators having a native taste for such company inherited according to popular rumour from his true father anxious also to escape from the too impressive company of the gravest and sweetest specimen of old age Marius had ever seen the tutor of the imperial children who had arrived to offer his birthday congratulations and now very familiarly and affectionately made a part of the group falling on the shoulders of the emperor kissing the empress Faustina on the face the little ones on the face and hands Marcus Cornelius fronto the orator favourite teacher of the emperor's youth afterwards his most trusted counsellor and now the undisputed occupant of the Sophistic throne whose equipage elegantly mounted with silver Marius had seen in the streets of Rome had certainly turned his many personal gifts to account with a good fortune remarkable even in that age so indulgent to professors and returitions the gratitude of the emperor Aurelius always generous to his teachers arranging their very quarrels sometimes for they were not always fair to one another had helped him to a really great place in the world but his sumptuous appendages including the villa and gardens of Mycenae had been born with an air perfectly becoming by the professor of a philosophy which even in its most accomplished and elegant phase presupposed a gentle contempt for such things with an intimate practical knowledge of manners physiognomies smiles disguises flatteries and courtly tricks of every kind a whole accomplished rhetoric of daily life he applied them all to the promotion of humanity and especially of men's family affection through a long life of now eighty years he had been as it were surrounded by the gracious and soothing air of his own eloquence the fame the echoes of it like warbling birds or murmuring bees setting forth in that fine medium the best ideas of matured pagan philosophy he had become the favorite director of noble youth yes it was the one instance Marius always eagerly on the lookout for such had yet seen of a perfectly tolerable perfectly beautiful old age an old age in which they seemed to one who perhaps habitually overvalued the expression of youth nothing to be regretted nothing really lost in what years had taken away the wise old man whose blue eyes and fair skin were so delicate uncontaminant and clear would seem to have replaced humanity and consciously each natural trait of youth as it departed from him by an equivalent grace of culture and had the blitheness the placid cheerfulness as he had also the infirmity the claim on stronger people of a delightful child and yet he seemed to be but awaiting his exit from life that moment with which the Stoics were almost as much preoccupied as the Christians differently and set Marius pondering on the contrast between a placidity like this at 80 years and the sort of desperateness he was aware of in his own manner of entertaining that thought his infirmities nevertheless had been painful and long continued with losses of children of pet grandchildren what with the crowd and the wretched streets it was a sign of affection which had cost him something to leave his own house at all that day and he was glad of the emperor's support as he moved from place to place among the children he protested so often to have loved as his own for a strange piece of literary good fortune at the beginning of the present century has set free the long buried fragrance of this famous friendship of the old world from below a valueless later manuscript in a series of letters wherein the two writers exchange for the most part their evening thoughts especially at family anniversaries and with entire intimacy on their children on the art of speech on all the various subtleties of the science of images rhetorical images above all of course on sleep and matters of health they are full of mutual admiration of each other's eloquence restless in absence till they see them noting characteristically their very dreams of each other expecting the day which will terminate the office the business or duty which separates them as superstitious people watch for the star at the rising of which they may break their fast to one of the writers to Aurelius the correspondence was sincerely of value we see him once reading his letters with genuine delight on going to rest Fronto seeks to deter his pupil from writing in Greek why buy at great cost a foreign wine inferior to that from one's own vineyard Aurelius on the other hand with an extraordinary innate susceptibility to words la parole pour la parole as the French say despairs in the presence of Fronto's rhetorical perfection like the modern visitor to the line and some other museums Fronto had been struck pleasantly struck by the family likeness among the Antonines and it was part of his friendship to make much of it in the case of the children of Faustina well I have seen the little ones he writes to Aurelius then apparently absent from them I have seen the little ones the pleasantest sight of my life for they are as like yourself as could possibly be it has well repaid me for my journey over that slippery road and up those steep rocks for I beheld you not simply face to face before me but more generously whichever way I turned to my right and my left for the rest I found them heaven be thanked with healthy cheeks and lusty voices one was holding a slice of white bread like a king's son the other a crust of brown bread the spring of a philosopher I pray the gods to have both the sower and the seed in their keeping to watch over this field wherein the ears of corn are so kindly alike ah I heard too their pretty voices so sweet that in the childish prattle of one and the other I seemed somehow to be listening yes in that chirping of your pretty chickens to the limpid and harmonious notes of your own oratory take care you will find me growing independent having those I could love in your place love on the surety of my eyes and ears magistro meo salutem replies the emperor I too have seen my little ones in your sight of them as also I saw yourself in reading your letter it is that charming letter forces me to write thus with reiterations of affection that is which are continual in these letters on both sides and which may strike a modern reader perhaps as fulsome or again as having something in common with the old Judaic unction of friendship they were certainly sincere to one of those children fronto had now brought the birthday gift of the silver trumpet upon which he ventured to blow softly now and again turning away with eyes excited at the sound when he thought the old man was not listening it was the well-worn valetudinarian subject of sleep on which fronto and orelius were talking together orelius always feeling it a burden fronto a thing of magic capacities so that he had written an incomium in its praise and often by ingenious arguments recommends his imperial pupil not to be bearing of it today with his younger listeners in mind he had a story to tell about it they say that our father Jupiter when he ordered the world at the beginning divided time into two parts exactly equal the one part he clothed with light the other with darkness he called them day and night and he assigned rest to the night and today the work of life at that time sleep was not yet born and men passed the whole of their lives awake only the quiet of the night was ordained for them instead of sleep but it came to pass little by little being that the minds of men are restless that they carried on their business alike by night as by day and gave no part at all to repose and Jupiter when he perceived that even in the night time they ceased not from trouble and that even the courts of law remained open it was the pride of Orelius as Fronto knew to be assiduous in those courts till far into the night resolved to appoint one of his brothers to be the overseer of the night and have authority over man's rest but Neptune pleaded in excuse the gravity of his constant charge of the seas and father dis the difficulty of keeping in subjection spirits below and Jupiter having taken counsel with the other gods perceived that the practice of nightly vigils was somewhat in favour it was then for the most part that Juno gave birth to her children Minerva the mistress of all art and craft loved the midnight lamp Mars delighted in the darkness for his plots and sallies and the favour of Venus and Bacchus was with those who roused by night it was that Jupiter formed the design of creating sleep and he added him to the number of the gods and gave him the charge of a night and rest putting into his hands the keys of human eyes with his own hands he mingled the juices wherewith sleep should soothe the hearts of mortals herb of enjoyment and herb of safety gathered from a grove in heaven and from the meadows of Acheron the herb of death expressing from it one single drop only no bigger than a tear one might hide with this juice he said poor slumber upon the eyelids of mortals so soon as it hath touched them they will lay themselves down motionless under thy power be not afraid they shall revive and in a while stand up again upon their feet thereafter Jupiter gave wings to sleep attached to the vicaries to his heels but to his shoulders like the wings of love for he said it becomes thee not to approach men's eyes as with the noise of chariots and the rushing of a swift coarser but in placid and merciful flight as upon the wings of a swallow nay with not so much as the flutter of the dove besides all this that he might be yet pleasant her to men he committed to him also a multitude of blissful dreams according to every man's desire one watched his favourite actor another listened to the flute or guided a charioteer in the race in his dream the soldier was victorious the general was born in triumph the wanderer returned home yes and sometimes those dreams come true just then Aurelius was summoned to make the birthday offerings to his household gods a heavy curtain of tapestry was drawn back and beyond it Marius gazed for a few moments into the larrarium or imperial chapel a patrician youth in white habit was in waiting with a little chest in his hand containing incense for the use of the altar on richly carved consoles or sideboards around this narrow chamber were arranged the rich apparatus of worship and the golden or gilded images adorned today with fresh flowers among them that image of fortune from the apartments of Antoninus Pius and such of the emperor's own teachers as were gone to their rest a dim fresco on the wall commemorated the ancient party of Lucius albinius who in flight from Rome on the morrow of a great disaster overtaking certain priests on foot with their sacred utensils descended from the wagon in which he rode and yielded it to the ministers of the gods as he ascended into the chapel the emperor paused and with a grave but friendly look at his young visitor delivered a parting sentence audible to him alone imitation is the most acceptable part of worship the gods had much rather mankind should resemble than flatter them close to whom you come nearest be the happier by your presence it was the very spirit of the scene and the hour the hour Marius had spent in the imperial house how temperate, how tranquilizing what humanity yet as he left the eminent company concerning whose ways of life at home he had been so youthfully curious and sought after his manner to determine the main trait in all this he had to confess that it was a sentiment of mediocrity though of a mediocrity for once really golden end of chapter 13 volume 1 chapter 14 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 volume 1 chapter 14 manly amusement during the eastern war there came a moment when schism in the empire had seemed possible through the defection of Lucius Verus when to Aurelius it had also seemed possible to confirm his allegiance by no lesser gift than his beautiful daughter Lucilla the eldest of his children the Domnulla probably of those letters the little lady grown now to strong and stately maidenhood had been ever something of the good genius the better soul to Lucius Verus by the law of contraries her somewhat cold and apathetic modesty acting as a counterfoil to the young man's tigerish fervour conducted to Ephesus she had become his wife by form of civil marriage the more solemn wedding rites being deferred till their return to Rome the ceremony of the confariation or religious marriage in which bride and bridegroom partook together of a certain mystic bread were celebrated accordingly with du pomp early in the spring Aurelius himself assisting with much domestic feeling a crowd of fashionable people filled the space before the entrance to the apartments of Lucius on the Palatine Hill richly decorated for the occasion commenting, not always quite delicately, on the various details of the rite which only a favoured few succeeded in actually witnessing she comes Marius could hear them say escorted by her young brothers it is the young Commodus who carries the torch of white thornwood a basket of work things the toys for the children and then after a watchful pause she is winding the woollen thread round the doorposts ah, I see the marriage cake the bridegroom presents the fire and water then in a longer pause was heard the chorus Thalassier, Thalassier and for just a few moments in the strange light of many wax tapers at noonday Marius could see them both side by side while the bride was lifted over the doorstep Lucius Ferris heated and handsome the pale impassive Lucila looking very long and slender in her closely folded yellow veil and high nuptial crown as Marius turned away glad to escape from the pressure of the crowd he found himself face to face with Cornelius an infrequent spectator on occasions such as this it was a relief to depart with him so fresh and quiet he looked though in all his splendid equestrian array in honour of the ceremony from the garish heat of the marriage scene the reserve which had puzzled Marius so much on his first day in Rome was but an instant of many to him wholly unaccountable avoidances alike of things and persons which must certainly mean that an intimate companionship would cost him something in the way of seemingly indifferent amusements some inward standard Marius seemed to detect there though wholly unable to estimate its nature of distinction, selection, refusal amid the various elements of the fervid and corrupt life across which they were moving together some secret constraining motive ever on the alert at eye and ear which carried him through Rome with his charm so that Marius could not but think of that figure of the white bird in the marketplace as undoubtedly made true of him and Marius was still full of admiration for this companion who had known how to make himself very pleasant to him here was the clear cold corrective which the fever of his present life demanded without it he would have felt alternately suffocated so gaudy and overdone and yet so intolerably empty in which people even at their best seemed only to be brooding like the wise emperor himself over a world's disillusion for with all the severity of Cornelius there was such a breeze of hopefulness freshness and hopefulness as of new morning about him for the most part as I said those refusals that reserve of his seemed unaccountable but there were cases where the unknown monitor acted in a direction with which the judgment or instinct of Marius himself wholly concurred the effective decision of Cornelius strengthening him further therein as by a kind of outwardly embodied conscience and the entire drift of his education determined him on one point at least to be wholly of the same mind as his peculiar friend they too it might be together against the world when alone of a whole company of brilliant youth he had withdrawn from his appointed place in the Amphitheater at a grand public show which after an interval of many months was presented there in honour of the nuptials of Lucius Verus and Lucila and it was still to the eye through visible movement and aspect the character or genius of Cornelius made itself felt by Marius even as on that afternoon when he had girt on his armour among the expressive lights and shades of the dim old villa at the roadside and every object of his nightly array had seemed to be but sign or symbol of some other thing far beyond it for consistently with his really poetic temper all influence reached Marius even more exclusively than he was aware through the medium of sense from Flavian in that brief early summer of his existence he had derived a powerful impression of the perpetual flux he had caught there as in cypher or symbol or low whispers more effective than any definite language his own Cyrenaic philosophy presented thus for the first time in an image or person with much attractiveness touched also consequently with a pathetic sense of personal sorrow a concrete image the abstract equivalent of which he could recognise afterwards when the agitating personal influence had settled down for him clearly enough into a theory of practice but of what possible intellectual formula could this mystic Cornelius be the sensible exponent seeming as he did to live ever in close relationship with and recognition of a mental view a source of discernment a light upon his way which had certainly not yet sprung up for Marius meantime the discretion of Cornelius his energetic clearness and purity were a charm rather physical than moral his exquisite correctness of spirit at all events accorded so perfectly with the regular beauty of his person as to seem to depend upon it and wholly different as was this later friendship with its exigency its warnings its restraints from the feverish attachment to Flavian which had made him at times like an uneasy slave still like that it was a reconciliation to the world of sense the visible world from the hopefulness of this gracious presence all visible things around him even the commonest objects of everyday life if they but stood together to warm their hands at the same fire took for him a new poetry a delicate fresh bloom and interest it was as if his bodily eyes had been indeed mystically washed renewed strengthened and how eagerly with what a light heart would Flavian have taken his place in the amphitheater among the youth of his own age with what an appetite for every detail of the entertainment and its various accessories the sunshine filtered into soft gold by the veiler with their serpentine patterning spread over the more select part of the company the Vestal Virgins taking their privilege of seats near the Empress Faustina who sat there in a maze of double coloured gems changing as she moved like the waves of the sea the cool circle of shadow in which the wonderful toilets of the fashionable told so effectively around the blazing arena covered again and again during the many hours show with clean sand for the absorption of certain great red patches there by troops of white-shirted boys for whom the good-natured audience provided a scramble of nuts and small coin flung to them over a trellis work of silver gilt and amber precious gift of Nero while a rain of flowers and perfume fell over themselves and rose between the parts of their long feast upon the spectacle of animal suffering during his sojourn at Ephesus Lucius Verus had readily become a patron patron or protege of the great goddess of Ephesus the goddess of hunters and the show celebrated by way of a compliment to him today was to present some incidents of her story where she figures almost as the genius of madness in animals or in the humanity which comes in contact with them the entertainment would have an element of old Greek revival in it welcomed to the taste of a learned and Hellenizing society and as Lucius Verus was in some sense a lover of animals was to be a display of animals mainly there would be real wild and domestic creatures all of rare species and a real slaughter on so happy an occasion it was hoped that the Emperor might even concede a point and a living criminal fall into the jaws of the wild beasts and the spectacle was certainly to end in the destruction by one mighty shower of arrows of a hundred lions nobly provided by Aurelius himself for the amusement of his people Tam magnanimous for it the arena decked and in order for the first scene looked delightfully fresh reinforcing on the spirits of the audience the actual freshness of the morning which at this season still brought the dew along the subterranean ways that led up to it the sound of an advancing chorus was heard at last chanting the words of a sacred song or hymn to Diana for the spectacle of the amphitheater was after all a religious occasion to its grim acts of bloodshedding a kind of sacrificial character still belonged in the view of certain religious casuists tending conveniently to soothe the humane sensibilities of so pious an Emperor as Aurelius who in his fraternal complacency had consented to preside over the shows Artemis or Diana as she may be understood in the actual development of her worship was indeed the symbolical expression of two allied yet contrasted elements of human temper and experience man's amity and also his enmity towards the wild creatures when they were still in a certain sense his brothers she is the complete and therefore highly complex representative of a state in which man was still much occupied with animals not as his flock or as his servants after the pastoral relationship of our later orderly world but rather as his equals on friendly terms or the reverse a state full of primeval sympathies and antipathies of rivalries and common wants while he watched and could enter into the humours of those younger brothers with an intimacy the survivals of which in a later age seem often to have had a kind of madness about them Diana represented alike the bright and the dark side of this relationship but the humanities of that relationship were all forgotten today in the excitement of a show in which mere cruelty to animals their useless suffering and death formed the main point of interest people watched their destruction batch after batch in a not particularly inventive fashion though it was expected that the animals themselves as living creatures are apt to do when hard put to it could become inventive and make up by the fantastic accidents of their agony for the deficiencies of an age fallen behind in this matter of manly amusement it was as a deity of slaughter the taurian goddess who demands the sacrifice of the shipwrecked sailors thrown on her coasts the cruel moon-struck huntress who brings not only death but rabies among the wild creatures that Diana was to be presented in the person of a famous courtesan the aim at an actual theatrical illusion after the first introductory scene was frankly surrendered to the display of the animals artificially stimulated and maddened to attack each other and as Diana was also a special protectress of newborn creatures there would be a certain curious interest in the dexterously contrived escape of the young from their mothers as many pregnant animals as possible being carefully selected for the purpose the time had been and was to come again when the pleasures of the amphitheater centered in a similar practical joking upon human beings what more ingenious diversion had stage manager ever contrived than that incident itself a practical epigram never to be forgotten when a criminal who like slaves and animals had no rights was compelled to present the part of Icarus and the wings failing him in due course had fallen into a pack of hungry bears for the long shows of the amphitheater were so to speak the novel reading of that age a current help provided for sluggish imaginations in regard for instance to grisly accidents such as might happen to oneself but with every facility for comfortable inspection Skyvola might watch his own hand consuming crackling in the fire in the person of a culprit willing to redeem his life by an act so delightful to the eyes the very ears of a curious public if the part of Marcius was called for there was a criminal condemned to lose his skin it might be almost edifying to study minutely the expression of his face while the assistants corded and pegged him to the bench cunningly the servant of the law waiting by who after one short cut with his knife would slip the man's leg from his skin as neatly as if it were a stocking a finesse in providing the due amount of suffering for wrongdoers only brought to its height in Nero's living bonfires but then by making his suffering ridiculous you enlist against the sufferer and all would be manliness and do much to stifle any false sentiment of compassion the philosophic emperor having no great taste for sport and asserting here a personal scruple had greatly changed all that had provided that nets should be spread under the dancers on the tightrope and buttons for the swords of the gladiators but the gladiators were still there their bloody contests had, under the form of a popular amusement the efficacy of a human sacrifice as indeed the whole system of the public shows was understood to possess a religious import just at this point certainly the judgment of Lucretius on pagan religion is without reproach and Marius, weary and indignant feeling isolated in the great slaughter house could not but observe that in his habitual complacence to Lucius Verus who with loud shouts of applause from time to time lounged beside him Aurelius had sat impassibly through all the hours Marius himself had remained there for the most part indeed the emperor had actually averted his eyes from the show reading or writing on matters of public business but had seemed after all he was revolving perhaps that old stoic paradox of the imperceptibility of pain which might serve as an excuse should those savage popular humours ever again turn against men and women Marius remembered well his very attitude and expression on this day when a few years later certain things came to pass in gall under his full authority and that attitude and expression and already even thus early in their so friendly intercourse and though he was still full of gratitude for his interest a permanent point of difference between the emperor and himself between himself with all the convictions of his life taking centre today in his merciful angry heart and Aurelius as representing all the light all the apprehensive power there might be in pagan intellect there was something in a tolerance such as this in the bare fact that he could sit patiently through a scene like this which seemed to Marius to Mark Aurelius as his inferior now and forever on the question of righteousness to set them on opposite sides in some great conflict of which that difference was but a single presentment due in whatever proportions to the abstract principles he had formulated for himself or in spite of them there was the loyal conscience within him deciding, judging himself and everyone else with a wonderful sort of authority you ought me thinks to be something quite different from what you are here and here surely Aurelius must be lacking in that decisive conscience at first sight of the intimations of which Marius could entertain no doubt which he looked for in others he at least the humble follower Aurelii was aware of a crisis in life in this brief obscure existence a fierce opposition of real good and real evil around him the issues of which he must by no means compromise or confuse of the antagonisms of which the wise Marius Aurelius was unaware that long chapter of the cruelty of the Roman public shows may perhaps leave with the children of the modern world a feeling of self complacency yet it might seem well to ask ourselves it is always well to do so when we read of the slave trade for instance or of great religious persecutions on this side or on that or of anything else which raises in us the question is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing not merely what germs of feeling we may entertain which under fitting circumstances would induce us to the like but even more practically what thoughts what sort of considerations may be actually present to our minds such as might have furnished us living in another age and in the midst of those legal crimes with plausible excuses for them each age in turn perhaps having its own peculiar point of blindness with its consequent peculiar sin the touchstone of an unfailing conscience and the select few those cruel amusements were certainly the sin of blindness of deadness and stupidity in the age of Marius and his light had not failed him regarding it yes what was needed was the heart that would make it impossible to witness all this and the future would be with the forces that could beget a heart like that his chosen philosophy had said trust the eye strive to be right always in regard to the concrete experience beware of falsifying your impressions and its sanction had at least been effective here in protesting this and this is what you may not look upon surely evil was a real thing and the wise man wanting in the sense of it where not to have been by instinctive election on the right side was to have failed in life and of Chapter 14 and of Volume 1 of Marius the Epicurean