 Volume 1 Chapter 1 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 1 The Religion of Numa As in the triumph of Christianity, the old religion lingered latest in the country and died out at last as but paganism, the religion of the villages, before the advance of the Christian church. So in an earlier century it was in places remote from town life that the older and purer forms of paganism itself had survived the longest. While in Rome new religions had arisen with bewildering complexity around the dying old one, the earlier and simpler patriarchal religion, the religion of Numa, as people loved to fancy, lingered on with little change amid the pastoral life out of the habits and sentiment of which so much of it had grown. Glimpses of such a survival we may catch below the merely artificial attitudes of Latin pastoral poetry, in Tibulus especially, who has preserved for us many poetic details of old Roman religious usage. At me he contingat patrios celebrare penates, redere quantico menstruatura lari, he prays with unaffected seriousness. Something liturgical with repetitions of a consecrated form of words is traceable in one of his eleges as part of the order of a birthday sacrifice. The hearth from a spark of which, as one form of old legend related, the child Romulus had been miraculously born, was still indeed an altar, and the worthiest sacrifice to the gods, the perfect physical sanity of the young men and women, which the scrupulous ways of that religion of the hearth had tended to maintain. A religion of usages and sentiment rather than of facts and belief, and attached to very definite things and places. The oak of immemorial age, the rock on the hearth fashioned by weather, as if by some dim human art. The shadowy grove of ailex, passing into which one exclaimed involuntarily in consecrated phrase, deity is in this place, numen inest. It was in natural harmony with the temper of a quiet people amid the spectacle of rural life. Like that simpler faith between man and man, which Tibulus expressly connects with the period when, with an inexpensive worship, the old wooden gods had been still pressed for room in their homely little shrines. And about the time when the dying Antoninus Pius ordered his golden image of fortune to be carried into the chamber of his successor, now about to test the truth of the old platonic contention that the world would at last find itself happy, could it detach some reluctant philosophic student from the more desirable life of celestial contemplation and compel him to rule it. There was a boy living in an old country house, half farm, half villa, who for himself recruited that body of antique traditions by a spontaneous force of religious veneration such as had originally called them into being. More than a century and a half had passed since Tibulus had written, but the restoration of religious usages and their retention where they still survived was meantime come to be the fashion through the influence of imperial example and what had been in the main a matter of family pride with his father was sustained by a native instinct of devotion in the young Marius. A sense of conscious powers external to ourselves pleased or displeased by the right or wrong conduct of every circumstance of daily life that conscience of which the old Roman religion was a formal habitual recognition was becoming him a powerful current of feeling and observance. The old-fashioned partly puritanic or the power of which Wordsworth noted and valued so highly in a northern peasantry had its counterpart in the feeling of the Roman lad as he passed the spot touched of heaven where the lightning had struck dead and aged laborer in the field and upright stone still with mouldering garlands about it marked the place. He brought to that system of symbolic usages and they in turn developed in him further a great seriousness and impressibility to the sacredness of time of life and its events and the circumstances of family fellowship such gifts to men as fire water the earth from labor on which they live really understood by him as gifts a sense of religious responsibility in the reception of them it was a religion for the most part of fear of multitudinous scruples of a year-long burden of forms yet rarely on clear summer mornings for instance the thought of those heavenly powers afforded a welcome channel for the almost stifling sense of health and delight in him and relieved it as gratitude to the gods. The day of the little or private ambarwalia was come to be celebrated by a single family for the welfare of all belonging to it as the great college of the Arville brothers officiated at Rome in the interest of the whole state. At the appointed time all work ceases the instruments of labor lie untouched hung with wreaths of flowers while masters and servants together go in solemn procession along the dry paths of vineyard and cornfield conducting the victims whose blood is presently to be shared for the purification from all natural or supernatural taint of the lands they have gone about. The old Latin words of the liturgy to be said as the procession moved on its way though their precise meaning was long since become unintelligible were recited from an ancient illuminated role kept in the painted chest in the hall together with the family records. Early on that day the girls of the farm had been busy in the great portico filling large baskets with flowers plucked short from branches of apple and cherry then in spacious bloom to strew before the quaint images of the gods Ceres and Bacchus and the yet more mysterious Dea Dia as they passed through the fields carried in their little houses on the shoulders of white clad youths who were understood to proceed to this office in perfect temperance as pure in soul and body as the air they breathed in the firm weather of that early summertime. The clean lustre water and the full incense box were carried after them. The altars were gay with garlands of wool and the more sumptuous sort of blossom and green herbs to be thrown into the sacrificial fire. Fresh gathered this morning from a particular plot in the old garden set apart for the purpose. Just then the young leaves were almost as fragrant as flowers and the scent of the bean fields mingled pleasantly with the cloud of incense. But for the monotonous intonation of the liturgy by the priests clad in their strange stiff antique vestments and bearing ears of green corn upon their heads secured by flowing bands of white. The procession moved in absolute stillness. All persons, even the children, abstaining from speech after the utterance of the pontifical formula fawaiti linguis, silence, propitious silence, lest any words save those proper to the occasion should hinder the religious efficacy of the right. With the lad Marius, who, as the head of his house, took a leading part in the ceremonies of the day, there was a devout effort to complete this impressive outward silence by that inward tacitness of mind esteemed so important by religious Romans in the performance of these sacred functions. To him the sustained stillness without seemed really but to be waiting upon that interior mental condition of preparation or expectancy for which he was just then so intently striving. The persons about him certainly had never been challenged by those prayers and ceremonies to any ponderings on the divine nature. They conceived them rather to be the appointed means of setting such troublesome movements at rest. By them, the religion of Numa, so stayed ideal and comely the object of so much jealous conservatism, though of direct service as lending sanction to a sort of high scrupulosity, especially in the chief points of domestic conduct, was mainly prized as being, through its hereditary character, something like a personal distinction as contributing among the other accessories of an ancient house to the production of that aristocratic atmosphere which separated them from newly made people. But in the young Marius, the very absence from those venerable usages of all definite history and dogmatic interpretation had already awakened much speculative activity and today starting from the actual details of the divine service to some very lively surmises, though scarcely distinct enough to be thoughts, were moving backwards and forwards in his mind as the stirring wind had done all day among the trees and were like the passing of some mysterious influence over all the elements of his nature and experience. One thing only distracted him, a certain pity at the bottom of his heart and almost on his lips for the sacrificial victims and their looks of terror rising almost to disgust at the central act of the sacrifice itself, a piece of everyday butcher's work such as we decorously hide out of sight, though some then present certainly displayed a frank curiosity in the spectacle, thus permitted them on a religious pretext. The old sculptors of the great procession on the frieze of the Parthenon at Athens have delineated the placid heads of the victims led in to sacrifice with a perfect feeling for animals in forcible contrast with any indifference as to their sufferings. It was this contrast that distracted Marius now in the blessing of his fields and qualified his devout absorption upon the scrupulous fulfilment of all the details of the ceremonial as the procession approached the altars. The names of that great populace of little gods dear to the Roman home which the Pontives had placed on the sacred list of the Indicitamenta to be invoked because they can help on special occasions were not forgotten in the long litany. Vatican who causes the infant to utter his first cry, Fabulinus who prompts his first word, Cuba who keeps him quiet in his cot, Domidulca especially for whom Marius had through life a particular memory and devotion, the goddess who watches over one's safe coming home. The urns of the dead in the family chapel received their due service. They also were now become something divine, a goodly company of friendly and protecting spirits encamped about the place of their former abode. Above all others the father, dead ten years before, of whom, remembering but a tall grave figure above him in early childhood, Marius habitually thought as a genius, a little cold and severe. Candidus in sueto mirator li men olympi, sub pedibus que wedet nubes et sidera. Perhaps but certainly needs his altar here below and garlands today upon his own. But the dead genii were satisfied with little, a few violets, a cake dipped in wine or a morsel of honeycomb. Daily from the time when his childish footsteps were still uncertain had Marius taken them their portion of the family meal at the second course amidst the silence of the company. They loved those who brought them their sustenance, but deprived of these services would be heard wandering through the house crying sorrowfully in the stillness of the night. And those simple gifts, like other objects as trivial, bread, oil, wine, milk, had regained for him by their use in such religious service that poetic and as it were moral significance which surely belongs to all the means of daily life. Could we but break through the veil of our familiarity with things by no means vulgar in themselves? A hymn followed while the whole assembly stood with veiled faces. The fire rose up readily from the altars in clean bright flame, a favourable omen, making it a duty to render the mirth of the evening complete. Old wine was poured out freely for the servants at supper in the great kitchen where they had worked in the imperfect light through the long evenings of winter. The young Marius himself took but a very sober part in the noisy feasting. A devout regretful aftertaste of what had been really beautiful in the ritual he had accomplished took him early away that he might the better recall in reverie all the circumstances of the celebration of the day. As he sank into a sleep, pleasant with all the influences of long hours in the open air, he seemed still to be moving in procession through the fields with a kind of pleasurable awe. That feeling was still upon him as he awoke amid the beating of violent rain on the shutters in the first storm of the season. The thunder which startled him from sleep seemed to make the solitude of his chamber almost painfully complete as if the nearness of those angry clouds shut him up in a close place alone in the world. Then he thought of the sort of protection which that day's ceremonies assured to procure an agreement with the gods parchem deorum exposcere that was the meaning of what they had all day been busy upon. In a faith sincere but half suspicious he would feign have those powers at least not against him. His own nearer household gods were all around his bed. The spell of his religion as a part of the very essence of home, its intimacy, its dignity and security was forcible at that moment. Only it seemed to involve certain heavy demands upon him. End of Chapter 1 Volume 1, Chapter 2 of Marius the Epicurean This is the 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 2, White Nights To an instinctive seriousness the material abode in which the childhood of Marius was passed had largely added. Nothing you felt as you first caught sight of that coy retired place surely nothing could happen there without its full accompaniment of thought or reverie. White Nights, so you might interpret its old Latin name, ad wigilias albas. The red rose came first, says a quaint German mystic, speaking of the mystery of the so-called white things as being ever an afterthought, the doubles or seconds of real things and themselves but half real, half material, the white queen, the white witch, the white mass, which, as the black mass is a travesty of the true mass, turned to evil by horrible old witches, is celebrated by young candidates for the priesthood with an unconsecrated host by way of rehearsal. So White Nights, I suppose, after something like the same analogy should be nights not of quite blank forgetfulness but passed in continuous dreaming, only half veiled by sleep. Certainly the place was in such case true to its fanciful name in this that you might very well conceive in face of it that dreaming, even in the daytime, might come to much there. The young Marius represented an ancient family whose estate had come down to him much curtailed through the extravagance of a certain Marcellus two generations before, a favourite in his day of the fashionable world at Rome, where he had at least spent his substance with a correctness of taste Marius might seem to have inherited from him, as he was believed also to resemble him in a singularly pleasant smile, consistent, however, in the younger face with some degree of somber expression when the mind within was but slightly moved. As the means of life decreased the farm had crept nearer and nearer to the dwelling-house about which there was therefore a trace of workday negligence or homeliness, not without its picturesque charm for some, for the young master himself among them. The more observant passer-by would note, curious as to the inmates, a certain amount of dainty care amid that neglect, as if it came in part perhaps from a reluctance to disturb old associations. It was significant of the national character that a sort of elegant gentleman farming, as we say, had been much affected by some of the most cultivated Romans. But it became something more than an elegant diversion, something of a serious business with the household of Marius, and his actual interest in the cultivation of the earth and the care of flocks had brought him, at least, intimately near to those elementary conditions of life, a reverence for which the great Roman poet, as he has shown by his own half-mystic preoccupation with them, held to be the ground of primitive Roman religion as of primitive morals. But then farm life in Italy, including the culture of the olive and the vine, has a grace of its own and might well contribute to the production of an ideal dignity of character, like that of nature itself in this gifted region. Vulgarity seemed impossible. The place, though impoverished, was still deservedly dear, full of venerable memories and with a living sweetness of its own for today. To hold by such ceremonial traditions had been a part of the struggling family pride of the lad's father, to which the example of the head of the state, old Antoninus Pius, an example to be still further enforced by his successor, had given a fresh, though perhaps somewhat artificial, popularity. It had been consistent with many another homely and old-fashioned trait in him not to undervalue the charm of exclusiveness and immemorial authority, which membership in a local priestly college, hereditary in his house, conferred upon him. To set a real value on these things was but one element in that pious concern for his home and all that belonged to it, which, as Marius afterwards discovered, had been a strong motive with his father. The ancient him, Yana Novella, was still sung by his people when the new moon grew bright in the west, and even their wild custom of leaping through heaps of blading straw on a certain night in summer was not discouraged. The privilege of augury itself, according to tradition, had at one time belonged to his race, and if you can imagine how, once in a way, an impressable boy might have had an inkling, an inward mystic intimation of the meaning and consequences of all that, what was implied in it becoming explicit for him, you can see for right the mind of Marius, in whose house the auspices were still carefully consulted before every undertaking of moment. The devotion of the father then had handed on loyally, and that is all many not unimportant persons ever find to do, a certain tradition of life which came to mean much for the young Marius. The feeling with which he thought of his dead father was almost exclusively that of awe, though crossed at times by a not unpleasant sense of liberty, as he could but confess to himself, pondering, in the actual absence of so weighty and continual restraint, upon the arbitrary power which Roman religion and Roman law gave to the parent over the son. On the part of his mother, on the other hand, entertaining the husband's memory, there was a sustained freshness of regret, together with the recognition, as Marius fancied, of some costly self-sacrifice to be credited to the dead. The life of the widow, languid and shadowy enough, but for the poignancy of that regret, was like one long service to the departed soul. Its many annual observances centering about the funeral urn, a tiny, delicately carved marble house, still white and fair, in the family chapel, wreathed always with the richest flowers from the garden. To the dead, in fact, was conceded in such places a somewhat closer neighbourhood to the old homes they were thought still to protect than is usual with us, or was usual in Rome itself. A closeness which the living welcomed, so diverse are the ways of our human sentiment, and in which the more wealthy, at least in the country, might indulge themselves. All this Marius followed with a devout interest, sincerely touched and awed by his mother's sorrow. After the deification of the emperors, we are told it was considered impious so much as to use any coarse expression in the presence of their images. To Marius the whole of life seemed full of sacred presences, demanding of him a similar collectiveness. The severe and archaic religion of the villa, as he conceived it, begot in him a sort of devout circumspection, lest he should fall short at any point of the demand upon him of anything in which deity was concerned. He must satisfy with a kind of sacred equity. He must be very cautious lest he be found wanting to the claims of others in their joys and calamities, the happiness which deity sanctioned, or the blows in which it made itself felt. And from habit this feeling of a responsibility towards the world of man and things, towards a claim for due sentiment concerning them on his side, came to be a part of his nature, not to be put off. It kept him serious and dignified amid the Epicurean speculations which in after years much engrossed him. And when he had learnt to think of all religions as indifferent, serious, amid many properties and through many languid days, and made him anticipate all his life long as a thing towards which he must carefully train himself some great occasion of self-devotion, such as really came, that should consecrate his life and it might be its memory with others, as the early Christian looked forward to martyrdom at the end of his course as a seal of worth upon it. The traveller descending from the slopes of Luna even as he got his first view of the port of Venus would pause by the way to read the face as it were of so beautiful a dwelling place, lying away from the white road at the point where it began to decline somewhat steeply to the marshland below. The building of pale red and yellow marble mellowed by age which he saw beyond the gates was indeed but the exquisite fragment of a once large and sumptuous villa. Two centuries of the play of the sea wind were in the velvet of the mosses which lay along its inaccessible ledges and angles. Here and there the marble plates had slipped from their places where the delicate weeds had forced their way. The graceful wildness which prevailed in garden and farm moved place to a singular nicety about the actual habitation and a still more scrupulous sweetness and order reigned within. The old Roman architects seemed to have well understood the decorative value of the floor, the real economy there was, in the production of rich interior effect of a somewhat lavish expenditure upon the surface they trod on. The pavement of the hall had lost something of its evenness but, though a little rough to the foot, polished and cared for like a piece of silver, looked as mosaic work is apt to do its best in old age. Most noticeable among the ancestral masks each in its little seed and chest below the cornice was that of the wasteful but elegant Marcellus with the quaint resemblance in its yellow waxen features to Marius just then so full of animation and country colour. A chamber curved ingeniously into oval form which he had added to the mansion still contained his collection of works of art above all that head of Medusa for which the villa was famous. The spoilers of one of the old Greek towns on the coast had flung away or lost the thing as it seemed in some rapid flight across the river below from the sands of which it was drawn up in a fisherman's net with the fine golden laminae still clinging here and there to the bronze. It was Marcellus also who had contrived the prospect tower of two stories with the white pigeon house above so characteristic of the place. The little glazed windows in the uppermost chamber framed each its dainty landscape. The pallid crags of Carrara like wildly twisted snowdrifts above the purple heath. The distant harbour with its freight of white marble going to see the lighthouse temple of Wainus speciosa on its dark headland amid the long drawn curves of white breakers. Even on summer nights the air there had always a motion in it and drove the scent of the new moon hay along the passages of the house. Something pensive, spellbound and but half real something cloistral or monastic as we should say united to this exquisite order made the whole place seem to Marius as it were Sakellum the peculiar sanctuary of his mother who still in real widowhood provided the deceased Marius the elder with that secondary sort of life which we can give to the dead in our intensely realised memory of them the subjective immortality to use a modern phrase for which many a Roman epitaph cries out plaintively to widow or sister or daughter still in the land of the living certainly if any such considerations regarding them do reach the shadowy people he enjoyed that secondary existence that warm place still left in thought at least beside the living the desire for which is actually in various forms so great a motive with most of us and Marius the younger even thus early came to think of women's tears of women's hands to lay one to rest in death as in the sleep of childhood as a sort of natural want the soft lines of the white hands and face set among the many folds of the veil and stole of the Roman widow busy upon her needlework or with music sometimes defined themselves for him as the typical expression of maternity helping her with her white and purple walls and caring for her musical instruments he won as if from the handling of such things an urbane and feminine refinement qualifying duly his country grown habits the sense of a certain delicate blandness which he relished above all on returning to the chapel of his mother after long days of open-air exercise in winter or stormy summer for poetic souls in old Italy felt hardly less strongly than the English the pleasures of winter, of the hearth with the very dead warm in its generous heat keeping the young myrtles in flower though the hail is beating hard without one important principle of fruit afterwards in his Roman life that relish for the country fixed deeply in him in the winters especially when the sufferings of the animal world became so palpable even to the least observant it fixed in him a sympathy for all creatures for the almost human troubles and sicknesses of the flocks for instance it was a feeling which had in it something of religious veneration for life as such for that mysterious essence which man is powerless to create in even the feeblest degree one by one at the desire of his mother the lad broke down his cherished traps and springes for the hungry wild birds on the salt marsh a white bird she told him once looking at him gravely a bird which he must carry in his bosom across a crowded public place his own soul was like that would it reach the hands of his good genius on the opposite side unruffled and unsoiled and as his mother became to him the very type of maternity in things its unfailing pity and protectiveness and maternity itself the central type of all love so that beautiful dwelling place lent the reality of concrete outline to a peculiar ideal of home which throughout the rest of his life he seemed amid many distractions of spirit to be ever seeking to regain and a certain vague fear of evil constitutional in him enhanced still further this sentiment of home as a place of tried security his religion, that old Italian religion in contrast with the really light-hearted religion of Greece had its deep undercurrent of gloom its sad haunting imageries not exclusively confined to the walls of Etruscan tombs the function of the conscience not always as the prompter of gratitude for benefits received but oftenest as his accuser before those angry heavenly masters had a large part in it and the sense of some unexplored evil ever dogging his footsteps made him oddly suspicious of particular places and persons though his liking for animals was so strong yet one fierce day in early summer as he walked along a narrow road he had seen the snakes breeding and ever afterwards avoided that place and its ugly associations for there was something in the incident which made food distasteful and his sleep uneasy for many days afterwards the memory of it however had almost passed away when at the corner of a street in Pisa he came upon an African showman exhibiting a great serpent once more as the reptile writhed the former painful impression revived it was like a peep into the lower side of the real world and again for many days took all sweetness from food and sleep he wondered at himself indeed trying to puzzle out the secret of that repugnance having no particular dread of a snake's bite like one of his companions who had put his hand into the mouth of an old garden-god and roused there a sluggish viper a kind of pity even mingled with his aversion and he could hardly have killed or injured the animals which seemed already to suffer by the very circumstances of their life being what they were it was something like a fear of the supernatural or perhaps rather a moral feeling for the face of a great serpent with no grace of fur or feathers so different from quadruped or bird has a sort of humanity of aspect in its spotted and clouded nakedness there was a humanity dusty and sordid and as if far gone in corruption in the sluggish coil as it awoke suddenly into one metallic spring of pure enmity against him long afterwards when it happened that at Rome he saw a second time a showman with his serpents he remembered the night which had then followed thinking in Saint Augustine's vein on the real greatness of those little troubles of children of which older people make light but with a sudden gratitude also as he reflected how richly possessed his life had actually been by beautiful aspects and imageries seeing how greatly what was repugnant to the eye disturbed his peace thus the boyhood of Marius passed on the whole more given to contemplation than to action less prosperous in fortune than at an earlier day there had been reason to expect and animating his solitude as he read eagerly and intelligently with the traditions of the past already he lived much in the realm of the imagination and became bitimes as he was to continue all through life something of an idealist constructing the world for himself in great measure from within by the exercise of meditative power a vein of subjective philosophy with the individual for its standard of all things there would be always in his intellectual scheme of the world and of conduct with a certain incapacity wholly to accept other men's valuations and the generation of this peculiar element in his temper he could trace up to those days when his life had been so like the reading of a romance to him had the Romans a word for unworldly? the beautiful word umbratilis perhaps comes nearest to it and with that precise sense might describe the spirit in which he prepared himself for the saccadotal function hereditary in his family the sort of mystic enjoyment he had in the abstinence the strenuous self-control and aschesis which such preparation involved like the young Ion in the beautiful opening of the play by Euripides who every morning sweeps the temple floor with such a fund of cheerfulness in his service he was apt to be happy in sacred places with the susceptibility to their peculiar influences which he never outgrew so that often in aftertimes quite unexpectedly this feeling would revive in him with undiminished freshness that first early boyish ideal of priesthood the sense of dedication survived through all the distractions of the world and when all thoughts of such vocation had finally passed from him as a ministry in spirit at least towards a sort of hieratic beauty and order in the conduct of life and now what relieved in part this over-tension of soul was the lad's pleasure in the country and the open air above all the ramble to the coast over the marsh with its dwarf roses and wild lavender and delightful signs one after another the abandoned boat, the ruined flood-gates the flock of wild birds that one was approaching the sea the long summer day of idleness among its vague sense and sounds and it was characteristic of him that he relished especially the grave subdued northern notes in all that the charm of the French or English notes as we might term them in the luxuriant Italian landscape and of chapter 2 volume 1 chapter 3 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 3 change of air Dilexy Decorem Domus Tuai that almost morbid religious idealism and his healthful love of the country were both alike developed by the circumstances of a journey which happened about this time when Marius was taken to a certain temple of Isculapius among the hills of Etruria as was then usual in such cases for the cure of some boyish sickness the religion of Isculapius, though borrowed from Greece had been naturalised in Rome in the old republican times but had reached under the Antonines the height of its popularity throughout the Roman world that was an age of valetudinarians in many instances of imaginary ones but below its various crazes concerning health and disease largely multiplied a few years after the time of which I'm speaking by the miseries of a great pestilence lay a valuable because partly practicable belief that all the maladies of the soul might be reached through the subtle gateways of the body Salus, salvation for the Romans had come to mean bodily sanity the religion of the god of bodily health Salvatore, as they called him absolutely had a chance just then of becoming the one religion that mild and philanthropic son of Apollo surviving or absorbing all other pagan godhead the apparatus of the medical art the solitary mineral or herb, diet or abstinence and all the varieties of the bath came to have a kind of sacramental character so deep was the feeling in more serious minds of a moral or spiritual prophet in physical health beyond the obvious bodily advantages one had of it the body becoming truly, in that case but a quiet handmaid of the soul the priesthood or family of Isculapius of vast college believed to be in possession of certain precious medical secrets came nearest perhaps of all the institutions of the pagan world to the Christian priesthood the temples of the god rich in some instances with the accumulated thank offerings of centuries of a tasteful devotion being really also a kind of hospitals for the sick administered in a full conviction of the religiousness the refined and sacred happiness of a life spent in the relieving of pain elements of a really experimental and progressive knowledge there were doubtless amid this devout enthusiasm bent so faithfully on the reception of health as a direct gift from God but for the most part his care was held to take effect through a machinery easily capable of misuse for purposes of religious fraud through dreams above all inspired by Isculapius himself information as to the cause and cure of a malady was supposed to come to the sufferer in a belief based on the truth that dreams do sometimes for those who watch them carefully give many hints concerning the conditions of the body those latent weak points at which disease or death may most easily break into it in the time of Marcus Aurelius these medical dreams had become more than ever a fashionable caprice Aristides the orator a man of undoubted intellectual power has devoted six discourses to their interpretation really scientific gallant has recorded how beneficently they had intervened in his own case at certain turning points of life and a belief in them was one of the frailties of the wise emperor himself partly for the sake of these dreams living ministers of the God more likely to come to one in his actual dwelling place than elsewhere it was almost a necessity that the patient should sleep one or more nights in the precincts of a temple consecrated to his service during which time he must observe certain rules prescribed by the priests for this purpose after devoutly saluting the laries as was customary before starting on a journey Marius set forth one summer morning on his way to the famous temple which lay among the hills beyond the valley of the Arnus it was his greatest adventure hitherto he had much pleasure in all its details in spite of his feverishness starting early under the guidance of an old serving man who drove the mules with his wife who took all that was needful for their refreshment on the way and for the offering at the shrine they went under the genial heat halting now and then to pluck certain flowers seen for the first time on these high places upwards through a long day of sunshine while cliffs and wood sank gradually below their path the evening came as they passed along a steep white road with many windings among the pines and it was night when they reached the temple the lights of which shone out upon them pausing before the gates of the sacred enclosure while Marius became alive to a singular purity in the air a rippling of water about the place was the only thing audible as they waited till two priestly figures speaking Greek to one another admitted them into a large white wall and clearly lighted guest chamber in which while he partook of a simple but wholesomely prepared supper Marius still seemed to feel pleasantly the height they had attained to among the hills the agreeable sense of all this was spoiled by one thing only his old fear of serpents for it was under the form of a serpent that Esculapius had come to Rome and the last definite thought of his weary head before he fell asleep had been a dread either that the god might appear as he was said sometimes to do under this hideous aspect or perhaps one of those great, shallow, huge snakes themselves kept in the sacred place as he had also heard was usual after an hour's feverish dreaming he awoke with a cry it would seem he entered the room bearing a light the footsteps of the youthful figure which approached and sat by his bedside were certainly real ever afterwards when the thought arose in his mind of some unhoped for but entire relief from distress like blue sky in a storm at sea would come back the memory of that gracious countenance which amid all the kindness of its gaze had yet a certain air of predominance over him so that he seemed now for the first time to have found a master of his spirit it would have been sweet to be the servant of him who now sat beside him speaking he caught a lesson from what was then said still somewhat beyond his years a lesson in the skilled cultivation of life of experience of opportunity which seemed to be the aim of the young priest's recommendations the sum of them through various forgotten intervals of argument as might really have happened in a dream was the preset repeated many times under slightly varied aspects of a diligent promotion of the capacity of the eye in as much as in the eye would lie for him the determining influence of life he was of the number of those who in the words of a poet who came long after must be made perfect by the love of visible beauty the discourse was conceived from the point of view of a theory Marius found afterwards in Plato's Fidress which supposes men's spirits susceptible to certain influences diffused after the manner of streams or currents by fair things or persons visibly present green fields for instance or children's faces into the air around them acting in the case of some peculiar natures like potent material essences and conforming the seer to themselves as with some cunning physical necessity this theory, here aporoe tucalus in itself so fantastic had however determined in a range of methodical suggestions altogether quaint here and there from their circumstantial minuteness and throughout the possibility of some vision as of a new city coming down like a bride out of heaven a vision still indeed it might seem a long way off but to be granted perhaps one day to the eyes thus trained was presented as the motive of this laboriously practical direction if thou wouldst have all about thee like the colours of some fresh picture in a clear light so the discourse recommends after a pause be temperate in thy religious motions in love, in wine, in all things and of a peaceful heart with thy fellows to keep the eye clear by a sort of exquisite personal alacrity and cleanliness extending even to his dwelling place to discriminate ever more and more fastidiously select form and colour in things from what was less select to meditate much on beautiful visible objects on objects more especially connected with the period of youth on children at play in the morning the trees in early spring on young animals on the fashions and amusements of young men to keep ever by him if it were but a single choice flower a graceful animal or seashell as a token and representative of the whole kingdom of such things to avoid jealously in his way through the world everything repugnant to sight and should any circumstance tempt him to a general converse in the range of such objects to disentangle himself from that circumstance at any cost of place, money or opportunity such were in brief outline the duties recognised the rights demanded in this new formula of life and it was delivered with conviction as if the speaker verily saw into the recesses of the mental and physical being of the listener while his own expression of perfect temperance had in it a fascinating power the merely negative element of purity the mere freedom from taint or flaw in exercise as a positive influence long afterwards when Marius read the Carmides that other dialogue of Plato into which he seems to have expressed the very genius of old Greek temperance the image of this speaker came back vividly before him to take the chief part in the conversation it was as a weighty sanction of such temperance in almost visible symbolism an outward imagery identifying itself with unseen moralities but the memory of that night's double experience the dream of the great sallow snake and the utterance of the young priest always returned to him and the contrast therein involved made him revolt with unfaltering instinct from the bare thought of any excess in sleep or diet or even in matters of taste still more from any excess of a coarser kind when he awoke again still in the exceeding freshness he had felt on his arrival and now in full sunlight it was as if his sickness had really departed with the terror of the night a confusion had passed from the brain a painful dryness from his hands simply to be alive and there was a delight and as he bathed in the fresh water set ready for his use the air of the room about him seemed like pure gold the very shadows rich with colour summoned at length by one of the white-robed brethren he went out to walk in the temple garden at a distance on either side his guide pointed out to him the houses of birth and death erected for the reception respectively of women about to become mothers and of persons about to die neither of those incidents being allowed to defile as was thought the actual precincts of the shrine his visitor of the previous night he saw nowhere again but among the official ministers of the place was one already marked as of great celebrity whom Marius saw often in later days at Rome the physician Galen now about 30 years old he was standing the hood partly drawn over his face beside the holy well as Marius and his guide approached it this famous well or conduit primary cause of the temple and its surrounding institutions was supplied by the water of a spring flowing directly out of the rocky foundations of the shrine from the rim of its base and rose a circle of trim columns to support a cupola of singular lightness and grace itself full of reflected light from the rippling surface through which might be traced the wavy figure work of the marble lining below as the stream of water rushed in legend told of a visitor esculapius to this place earlier and happier than his first coming to Rome an inscription round the cupola recorded it in letters of gold being calm unto this place the son of God loved it exceedingly Huc Profectus Filius Dei Maxime Ammawit Hunklaucum and it was then that that most intimately human of the gods had given men the well with all its salatory properties the element itself when received into the mouth in consequence of its entire freedom from a dearing organic matter was more like a draft of wonderfully pure air than water and after tasting Marius was told many mysterious circumstances concerning it by one and another of the bystanders he who drank often thereof might well think he had tasted of the Homeric lotus so great became his desire to remain always on that spot carried to other places it was almost indefinitely conservative of its fine qualities nay a few drops of it would amend other water and it flowed not only with unvarying abundance but with a volume so oddly rhythmical that the well stood always full to the brim whatever quantity might be drawn from it seeming to answer with strange alacrity of service to human needs like a true creature and pupil of the philanthropic god certainly the little crowd around seemed to find singular refreshment in gazing on it the whole place appeared sensibly influenced by the amiable and healthful spirit of the thing all the objects of the country were there at their freshest in the great park like enclosure for the maintenance of the sacred animals offered by the convalescent grass and trees were allowed to grow with a kind of graceful wildness otherwise all was wonderfully nice and that freshness seemed to have something moral in its influence as if it acted upon the body and the merely bodily powers of apprehension through the intelligence and to the end of his visit Marius saw no more serpents a lad was just then drawing water for ritual uses and Marius followed him as he returned from the well more and more impressed by the religiousness of all he saw on his way through a long cloister or corridor the walls well nigh hidden under votive inscriptions recording favours from the son of Apollo and with a distant fragrance of incense in the air explained when he turned aside through an open doorway into the temple itself his heart bounded as the refined and dainty magnificence of the place came upon him suddenly in the flood of early sunshine with the ceremonial lights burning here and there and with all a singular expression of sacred order a surprising cleanliness and simplicity certain priests, men whose countenance is bore a deep impression of cultivated mind each with his little group of assistants were gliding round silently to perform their morning salutation to the god raising the closed thumb and finger of the right hand with a kiss in the air as they came and went on their sacred business bearing their frankincense and lustral water around the walls at such a level that the worshippers might read as in a book the story of the god and his sons the brotherhood of the Asclepiadai ran a series of imageries in low relief their delicate light and shade being heightened here and there with gold full list of inspired and sacred expression as if in this place the chisel of the artist had indeed dealt not with marble but with the very breath of feeling and thought was the scene in which the earliest generation of the sons of Isculapius were transformed into healing dreams for grown now too glorious to abide longer among men by the aid of their sire they put away their mortal bodies and came into another country yet not indeed into Elysium nor into the islands of the blessed but being made like to the immortal gods they began to pass about through the world changed thus far from their first form that they appear eternally young as many persons have seen them in many places ministers and heralds of their father passing to and fro over the earth like gliding stars which thing is indeed the most wonderful concerning them and in this scene as throughout the series with all its crowded personages Marius noted on the carved faces the same peculiar union of unction almost of hilarity with a certain self-possession and reserve which was conspicuous in the living ministrants around him in the central space upon a pillar or pedestal the hung ex-voto with the richest personal ornaments stood the image of Aesculapius himself surrounded by choice flowering plants it presented the type still with something of the severity of the earlier art of Greece about it not of an aged and crafty physician but of a youth earnest and strong of aspect carrying an ampoule or bottle in one hand and in the other a traveller's staff a pilgrim among his pilgrim worshippers and one of the ministers explained to Marius this pilgrim guys one chief source of the master's knowledge of healing had been observation of the remedies resorted to by animals laboring under disease or pain what leaf or berry the lizard or doormouse lay upon its wounded fellow to which purpose for long years he had led the life of a wanderer in wild places the boy took his place as the last comer a little way behind the group of worshippers who stood in front of the image there with uplifted face the palms of his two hands raised and opened before him and taught by the priest he said his collect of thanksgiving and prayer Aristides has recorded it at the end of his Asclepiadai to the inspired dreams O ye children of Apollo who in time past have stilled the waves of sorrow for many people lighting up a lamp of safety before those who travel by sea and land be pleased in your great condescension though ye be equal in glory with your elder brethren the dioscuri and your lot in immortal youth be as theirs to accept this prayer which in sleep and vision ye have inspired order it aright I pray you according to your loving kindness to men preserve me from sickness and endure my body with such a measure of health as may suffice it for the obeying of the spirit that I may pass my days unhindered and in quietness on the last morning of his visit Marius entered the shrine again and just before his departure the priest who had been his special director during his stay at the place lifting a cunningly contrived panel which formed the back of one of the carved seats but him looked through what he saw was like the vision of a new world by the opening of some unsuspected window in a familiar dwelling place he looked out upon a long drawn valley of singularly cheerful aspect hidden by the peculiar confirmation of the locality from all points of observation but this in a green meadow at the foot of the steep olive clad rocks below and obvices were taking their exercise the softly sloping sides of the veil lay alike in full sunlight and its distant opening was closed by a beautifully formed mountain from which the last reeds of morning mist were rising under the heat it might have seemed the very presentment of a land of hope its hollows brimful of a shadow of blue flowers and low on the one level space of the horizon in a long dark line were towers and a dome and that was Pisa or Rome was it? asked Marius ready to believe the utmost in his excitement all this served as he understood afterwards in retrospect at once to strengthen and to purify a certain vein of character in him developing the ideal pre-existent there of a religious beauty associated for the future with the exquisite splendor of the temple of Isculapius as it dawned upon him on that morning of his first visit it developed that ideal in connection with a vivid sense of the value of mental and bodily sanity and this recognition of the beauty even for the aesthetic sense of mere bodily health now acquired operated afterwards as an influence morally salatory counteracting the less desirable or hazardous tendencies of some phases of thought through which he was to pass he came home brown with health to find the health of his mother failing and about her death which occurred not long afterwards there was a circumstance which rested with him as the cruelest touch of all in an event which for a time seemed to have taken the light out of the sunshine she died away from home but sent for him at the last with a painful effort on her part but to his great gratitude pondering as he always believed that he might chance otherwise to look back all his life long upon a single fault with something like remorse and find the burden a great one for it happened that through some sudden incomprehensible petulance there had been an angry childish gesture and a slighting word at the very moment of her departure actually for the last time remembering this he would ever afterwards pray to be saved from offenses against his own affections the thought of that marred parting having peculiar bitterness for one who set so much store both by principle and habit on the sentiment of home End of Chapter 3 Volume 1 Chapter 4 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 Patter Volume 1 Chapter 4 The Tree of Knowledge O mare, o litus, verum secretum que museon qu'am multa in venitis qu'am multa dictatis plenis letters It would hardly have been possible to feel more seriously than did Marius in those grave years of his early life but the death of his mother turned seriousness of feeling into a matter of the intelligence it made him a questioner and by bringing into full evidence to him the force of his affections and the probable importance of their place in his future developed in him generally the more human and earthly elements of character A singularly birreal consciousness of the realities of life pronounced itself in him still, however, as in the main a poetic apprehension though united already with something of personal ambition and the instinct of self-assertion There were days when he could suspect though it was a suspicion he was careful at first to put from him that that early, much cherished religion of the villa might come to count with him as but one form of poetic beauty or of the ideal in things as but one voice in a world where there were many voices it would be a moral weakness not to listen to and yet this voice through its forcible preoccupation of his childish conscience would make a claim of a quite exclusive character defining itself as essentially one of but two possible leaders of his spirit the other proposing to him unlimited self-expansion in a world of various sunshine The contrast was so pronounced as to make the easy light-hearted, unsuspecting exercise of himself among the temptations of the new phase of life which had now begun a rival religion a rival religious service The temptations, the various sunshine were those of the old town of Pisa where Marius was now a tall schoolboy Pisa was a place lying just far enough from home to make his rare visits to it in childhood seem like adventures such as had never failed to supply new and refreshing impulses to the imagination The partly decayed pensive town which still had its commerce by sea and its fashion at the bathing season had land at one time the vivid memory of its fair streets of marble at another the solemn outline of the dark hills of lunar on its background at another the living glances of its men and women to the thickly gathering crowd of impressions out of which his notion of the world was then forming and while he learnt that the object the experience as it will be known to memory is really from first to last the chief point for consideration in the conduct of life these things were feeding also the idealism constitutional with him his innate and habitual longing for a world altogether fairer than that he saw The child could find his way in thought along those streets of the old town expecting duly the shrines at their corners the recurrent intervals of garden courts or side views of distant sea the great temple of the place as he could remember it on turning back once for a last look from an angle of his homeward road counting its tall grey columns between the blue of the bay and the blue fields of blossoming flax beyond the harbour and its lights the foreign ships lying there the sailors chapel of venus and her gilded image hung with votive gifts the seamen themselves their women and children who had a whole peculiar colour world of their own the boys superficial delight in the broad light and shadow of all that was mingled with the sense of power of unknown distance of the danger of storm and possible death to this place then marius came down now from white nights to live in the house of his guardian or tutor that he might attend the school of a famous returition and learn, among other things, Greek the school, one of many imitations of Plato's academy in the old Athenian garden lay in a quiet suburb of Pisa and had its grove of cypresses its porticoes, a house for the master its chapel and images for the memory of Marius in after days a clear morning sunlight seemed to lie perpetually on that severe picture in old grey and green the lad went to this school daily betimes in state at first with a young slave to carry the books and certainly with no reluctance for the sight of his fellow scholars and their petulant activity coming upon the sadder sentimental moods of his childhood awoke at once that instinct of emulation which is but the other side of sympathy and he was not aware of course how completely the difference of his previous straining had made him, even in his most enthusiastic participation in the ways of that little world still essentially but a spectator while all their heart was in their limited boyish race and its transitory prizes he was already entertaining himself very pleasurably meditative with the tiny drama in action before him as but the mimic preliminary exercise for a larger contest and already with an implicit epicureanism watching all the gallant effects of their small rivalries a scene in the main of fresh delightful sunshine he entered at once into the sensations of a rivalry beyond them into the passion of men and had already recognised a certain appetite for fame for distinction among his fellows as his dominant motive to be the fame he conceived for himself at this time was as the reader will have anticipated of the intellectual order that of a poet perhaps and as in that grey monastic tranquility of the villa inward voices from the reality of unseen things had come abundantly so here with the sounds and aspects of the shore and amid the obanities the graceful follies of a bathing place it was the reality the tyrannous reality of things visible that was born in upon him the real world around a present humanity not less comely it might seem than that of the old heroic days endowing everything it touched upon however remotely down to its little passing tricks of fashion even with a kind of fleeting beauty exercised over him just then a great fascination that sense had come upon him in all its power one exceptionally fine summer the summer when, at a somewhat earlier age than was usual he had formally assumed the dress of manhood going into the forum for that purpose accompanied by his friends in festival array at night after the full measure of those cloudless days he would feel well nigh wear it out as if with a long succession of pictures and music as he wandered through the gay streets or on the seashore the real world seemed indeed boundless and himself almost absolutely free in it with a boundless appetite for experience, for adventure whether physical or of the spirit his entire rearing hitherto had lent itself to an imaginative exaltation of the past but now the spectacle actually afforded to his untired and freely open senses suggested the reflection that the present had it might be really advanced beyond the past and he was ready to boast in the very fact that it was modern if in a voluntary archaism the polite world of that day went back to a choice generation as it fancied for the purpose of a fastidious self-correction in matters of art, of literature and even as we have seen of religion at least it improved by a shade or two of more scrupulous finish on the old pattern and the new era like the noite site of the German enthusiasts at the beginning of our own century might perhaps be disearned awaiting one just a single step onward, the perfected new manner in the consummation of time alike as regards the things of the imagination and the actual conduct of life only while the pursuit of an ideal like this demanded entire liberty of heart and brain that old, staid, conservative religion of his childhood certainly had its being in a world of somewhat narrow restrictions but then the one was absolutely real with nothing less than the reality of seeing and hearing the other how vague shadowy, problematical could it so limited probabilities be worth taking into account in any practical question as to the rejecting or receiving of what was indeed so real and on the face of it so desirable and dating from the time of his first coming to school a great friendship had grown up for him in that life of so few attachments the pure and disinterested friendship of schoolmates he had seen Flavian for the first time the day on which he had come to Pisa a moment when his mind was full of wistful thoughts regarding the new life to begin for him tomorrow and he gazed curiously at the crowd of bustling scholars as they came from their classes there was something in Flavian a shade disdainful as he stood isolated from the others for a moment explained in part by his stature and the distinction of the low broad forehead though there was pleasantness also for the newcomer in blue eyes which seemed somehow to take a fuller hold upon things around than his usual with boys Marius knew that those proud glances made kindly note of him for a moment and felt something like friendship at first sight there was a tone of reserve of gravity there amid perfectly disciplined health which to his fancy seemed to carry forward the expression of the austere sky and the clear song of the blackbird on that grey march evening Flavian indeed was a creature who changed much with the changes of the passing light and shade about him and was brilliant enough under the early sunshine in school next morning of all that little world of more or less gifted youth surely the centre was this lad of servile birth Prince of the school he had gained an easy dominion master by the fascination of his parts and over his fellow scholars by the figure he bore he wore already the manly dress and standing there in class as he displayed his wonderful quickness in reckoning or his taste in declaiming Homer he was like a carved figure in motion thought Marius but with that indescribable gleam upon it which the words of Homer actually suggested as perceptible on the visible signs of the gods a story hung by him a story which his comrades acutely connected with his habitual air of somewhat peevish pride two points were held to be clear amid its general vagueness a rich stranger paid his schooling and he was himself very poor though there was an attractive frequency in the poverty of Flavian which in a scholar of another figure might have been despised over Marius too his dominion was in tire three years older than he Flavian was appointed to help the young boy in his studies and Marius thus became virtually his servant in many things taking his humours with a sort of grateful pride in being noticed at all and thinking over all this afterwards found that the fascination experienced by him had been a sentimental one dependent on the concession to himself of an intimacy a certain tolerance of his company granted to none beside that was in the earliest days and then, as their intimacy grew the genius the intellectual power of Flavian began its sway over him the brilliant youth who loved dress and dainty food and flowers and seemed to have a natural alliance with him upon everything else which was physically select and bright cultivated also that phoppery of words of choice-diction which was common among the elite spirits of that day and Marius, early and expert and elegant penman transcribed his verses the euphuism of which amid a genuine original power was then so delightful to him in beautiful ink the benefit of Flavian's really great intellectual capacities developed and accomplished under the ambitious desire to make his way effectively in life among other things he introduced him to the writings of a sprightly wit, then very busy with the pen, one Lucian writings seeming to overflow with that intellectual light turned upon dim places which at least in seasons of mental fair weather made people laugh where they have been want perhaps to pray and surely the sunlight which filled those well remembered early mornings in school had had more than the usual measure of gold in it Marius at least would lie awake before the time thinking with delight of the long coming hours of hard work in the presence of Flavian as other boys dream of a holiday it was almost by accident so wayward and capricious was he that reserve gave way and Flavian told the story of his father a freedman presented late in life and almost against his will with the liberty so fondly desired in youth but on condition of the sacrifice of part of his peculium the slaves diminutive hoard amassed by many a self-denial in an existence necessarily hard the rich man interested in the promise of the fair child born on his estate had sent him to school the meanness and dejection nevertheless of that unoccupied old age defined the leading memory of Flavian revived sometimes after this first confidence with a burst of angry tears amid the sunshine but nature had had her economy in nursing the strength of that one natural affection for save his half-selfish care for Marius it was the single really generous part the one piety in the lad's character in him Marius saw the spirit of unbelief achieved as if at one step the much admired freedman's son as with the privilege of a natural aristocracy believed only in himself in the brilliant and many sensuous gifts he had or meant to acquire and then he had certainly yielded himself though still with untouched health in a world where manhood comes early to the seductions of that luxurious town and Marius wondered sometimes in the freer revelation of himself by conversation at the extent of his early corruption how often afterwards did evil things present themselves in malign association with the memory of that beautiful head and with a kind of borrowed distinction and charm in its natural grace to Marius at a later time he counted for as it were an epitome of the whole pagan world the depth of its corruption and its perfection of form and still in his mobility his animation in his eager capacity for various life he was so real an object after that visionary idealism of the villa his voice his glance the breaking in of the solid world upon one amid the flimsy fictions of a dream a shadow handling all things as shadows had felt a sudden real and poignant heat in them meantime under his guidance Marius was learning quickly and abundantly because with a good will there was that in the actual effectiveness of his figure which stimulated the younger lad to make the most of opportunity and he had experience already that education largely increased one's capacity for enjoyment he was acquiring what it is the chief function of all higher education to impart the art namely of so relieving the ideal or poetic traits the elements of distinction in our everyday life of so exclusively living in them that the unadorned remainder of it the mere drift or debris of our days comes to be as though it were not and the consciousness of this aim came with the reading of one particular book then fresh in the world with which he fell in about this time a book which awakened the poetic or romantic capacity as perhaps some other book might have done but was peculiar in giving it a direction emphatically sensuous it made him in that visionary reception of everyday life the seer more especially of a revelation in colour and form if our modern education in its better efforts really conveys to any of us that kind of idealizing power it does so though dealing mainly as its professed instruments with the most select and ideal remains of ancient literature oftenest by truant reading and thus it happened also long ago with Marius and his friend End of chapter 4