Hypatia Part 21

'Heaven forbid! I only offer one possible explanation of a plain fact. The other is, that as Julian was not going quite the right way to work to restore the worship of the Olympians, the Sun-G.o.d found it expedient to withdraw him from his post, and now sends in his place Hypatia the philosopher, who will be wise enough to avoid Julian's error, and not copy the Galilaeans too closely, by imitating a severity of morals at which they are the only true and natural adepts.'

'So Julian's error was that of being too virtuous? If it be so, let me copy him, and fail like him. The fault will then not be mine, but fate's.'

'Not in being too virtuous himself, most stainless likeness of Athene, but in trying to make others so. He forgot one half of Juvenal's great dictum about "Panem and Circenses," as the absolute and overruling necessities of rulers. He tried to give the people the bread without the games .... And what thanks he received for his enormous munificence, let himself and the good folks of Antioch tell--you just quoted his Misopogon--'

'Ay-the lament of a man too pure for his age.'

'Exactly so. He should rather have been content to keep his purity to himself, and have gone to Antioch not merely as a philosophic high-priest, with a beard of questionable cleanliness, to offer sacrifices to a G.o.d in whom--forgive me--n.o.body in Antioch had believed for many a year. If he had made his entrance with ten thousand gladiators, and our white elephant, built a theatre of ivory and gla.s.s in Daphne, and proclaimed games in honour of the Sun, or of any other member of the Pantheon--'

'He would have acted unworthily of a philosopher.'

'But instead of that one priest draggling up, poor devil, through the wet gra.s.s to the deserted altar with his solitary goose under his arm, he would have had every goose in Antioch--forgive my stealing a pun from Aristophanes--running open-mouthed to worship any G.o.d known or unknown--and to see the sights.'

'Well,' said Hypatia, yielding perforce to Orestes's cutting arguments. 'Let us then restore the ancient glories of the Greek drama. Let us give them a trilogy of Aeschylus or Sophocles.'

'Too calm, my dear madam. The Eumenides might do certainly, or Philoctetes, if we could but put Philoctetes to real pain, and make the spectators sure that he was yelling in good earnest.'

'Disgusting!'

'But necessary, like many disgusting things.'

'Why not try the Prometheus?'

'A magnificent field for stage effect, certainly. What with those ocean nymphs in their winged chariot, and Ocean on his griffin .... But I should hardly think it safe to reintroduce Zeus and Hermes to the people under the somewhat ugly light in which Aeschylus exhibits them.'

'I forgot that,' said Hypatia. 'The Orestean trilogy will be best, after all.'

'Best? perfect--divine! Ah, that it were to be my fate to go down to posterity as the happy man who once more revived Aeschylus's masterpieces on a Grecian stage! But--Is there not, begging the pardon of the great tragedian, too much reserve in the Agamemnon for our modern taste? If we could have the bath scene represented on the stage, and an Agamemnon who could he really killed--though I would not insist on that, because a good actor might make it a reason for refusing the part--but still the murder ought to take place in public.'

'Shocking! an outrage on all the laws of the drama. Does not even the Roman Horace lay down as a rule the--Nec pueros coram populo Medea trucidet?'

'Fairest and wisest, I am as willing a pupil of the dear old Epicurean as any man living--even to the furnishing of my chamber; of which fact the Empress of Africa may some day a.s.sure herself. But we are not now discussing the art of poetry, but the art of reigning; and, after all, while Horace was sitting in his easy- chair, giving his countrymen good advice, a private man, who knew somewhat better than he what the ma.s.s admired, was exhibiting forty thousand gladiators at his mother's funeral.'

'But the canon has its foundation in the eternal laws of beauty. It has been accepted and observed.'

'Not by the people for whom it was written. The learned Hypatia has surely not forgotten, that within sixty years after the Ars Poetica was written, Annaeus Seneca, or whosoever wrote that very bad tragedy called the Medea, found it so necessary that she should, in despite of Horace, kill her children before the people, that he actually made her do it!'

Hypatia was still silent--foiled at every point, while Orestes ran on with provoking glibness.

'And consider, too, even if we dare alter Aeschylus a little, we could find no one to act him.'

'Ah, true! fallen, fallen days!'

'And really, after all, omitting the questionable compliment to me, as candidate for a certain dignity, of having my namesake kill his mother, and then be hunted over the stage by furies--'

'But Apollo vindicates and purifies him at last. What a n.o.ble occasion that last scene would give for winning them hack to their old reverence for the G.o.d!'

'True, but at present the majority of spectators will believe more strongly in the horrors of matricide and furies than in Apollo's power to dispense therewith. So that I fear must be one of your labours of the future.'

'And it shall be,' said Hypatia. But she did not speak cheerfully.

'Do you not think, moreover,' went on the tempter, 'that those old tragedies might give somewhat too gloomy a notion of those deities whom we wish to reintroduce--I beg pardon, to rehonour? The history of the house of Atreus is hardly more cheerful, in spite of its beauty, than one of Cyril's sermons on the day of judgment, and the Tartarus prepared for hapless rich people?'

'Well,' said Hypatia, more and more listlessly; 'it might be more prudent to show them first the fairer and more graceful side of the old Myths. Certainly the great age of Athenian tragedy had its playful reverse in the old comedy.'

'And in certain Dionysiac sports and processions which shall be nameless, in order to awaken a proper devotion for the G.o.ds in those who might not be able to appreciate Aeschylus and Sophocles.'

'You would not reintroduce them?'

'Pallas forbid! but give as fair a subst.i.tute for them as we can.'

'And are we to degrade ourselves because the ma.s.ses are degraded?'

'Not in the least. For my own part, this whole business, like the catering for the weekly pantomimes, is as great a bore to me as it could have been to Julian himself. But, my dearest madam--"Panem and Circenses"--they must be put into good humour; and there is but one way--by "the l.u.s.t of the flesh, and the l.u.s.t of the eye, and the pride of life," as a certain Galilaean correctly defines the time- honoured Roman method.'

'Put them into good humour? I wish to l.u.s.trate them afresh for the service of the G.o.ds. If we must have comic representations, we can only have them conjoined to tragedy, which, as Aristotle defines it, will purify their affections by pity and terror.'

Orestes smiled.

'I certainly can have no objection to so good a purpose. But do you not think that the battle between the gladiators and the Libyans will have done that sufficiently beforehand? I can conceive nothing more fit for that end, unless it be Nero's method of sending his guards among the spectators themselves, and throwing them down to the wild beasts in the arena. How thoroughly purified by pity and terror must every worthy shopkeeper have been, when he sat uncertain whether he might not follow his fat wife into the claws of the nearest lion!'

'You are pleased to be witty, sir,' said Hypatia, hardly able to conceal her disgust.

'My dearest bride elect, I only meant the most harmless of reductiones ad absurdum of an abstract canon of Aristotle, with which I, who am a Platonist after my mistress's model, do not happen to agree. But do, I beseech you, be ruled, not by me, but by your own wisdom. You cannot bring the people to appreciate your designs at the first sight. You are too wise, too pure, too lofty, too far- sighted for them. And therefore you must get power to compel them. Julian, after all, found it necessary to compel--if he had lived seven years more he would have found it necessary to persecute.'

'The G.o.ds forbid that--that such a necessity should ever arise here.'

'The only way to avoid it, believe me, is to allure and to indulge. After all, it is for their good.'

'True,' sighed Hypatia. 'Have your way, sir.'

'Believe me, you shall have yours in turn. I ask you to be ruled by me now, only that you may be in a position to rule me and Africa hereafter.'

'And such an Africa! Well, if they are born low and earthly, they must, I suppose, he treated as such; and the fault of such a necessity is Nature's, and not ours.--Yet it is most degrading!--But still, if the only method by which the philosophic few can a.s.sume their rights, as the divinely-appointed rulers of the world, is by indulging those lower beings whom they govern for their good--why, be it so. It is no worse necessity than many another which the servant of the G.o.ds must endure in days like these.'

'Ah,' said Orestes, refusing to hear the sigh, or to see the bitterness of the lip which accompanied the speech--'now Hypatia is herself again; and my counsellor, and giver of deep and celestial reasons for all things at which poor I can only s.n.a.t.c.h and guess by vulpine cunning. So now for our lighter entertainment. What shall it be?'

'What you will, provided it be not, as most such are, unfit for the eyes of modest women. I have no skill in catering for folly.'

'A pantomime, then? We may make that as grand and as significant as we will, and expend too on it all our treasures in the way of gewgaws and wild beasts.'

'As you like.'

'Just consider, too, what a scope for mythologic learning a pantomime affords. Why not have a triumph of some deity? Could I commit myself more boldly to the service of the G.o.ds! Now--who shall it be?'

'Pallas--unless, as I suppose, she is too modest and too sober for your Alexandrians?'

'Yes--it does not seem to me that she would be appreciated--at all events for the present. Why not try Aphrodite? Christians as well as Pagans will thoroughly understand her; and I know no one who would not degrade the virgin G.o.ddess by representing her, except a certain lady, who has already, I hope, consented to sit in that very character, by the side of her too much honoured slave; and one Pallas is enough at a time in any theatre.'

Hypatia shuddered. He took it all for granted, then--and claimed her conditional promise to the uttermost. Was there no escape? She longed to spring up and rush away, into the streets, into the desert--anything to break the hideous net which she had wound around herself. And yet--was it not the cause of the G.o.ds--the one object of her life? And after all, if he the hateful was to be her emperor, she at least was to be an empress; and do what she would-- and half in irony, and half in the attempt to hurl herself perforce into that which she knew that she must go through, and forget misery in activity, she answered as cheerfully as she could.

'Then, my G.o.ddess, thou must wait the pleasure of these base ones! At least the young Apollo will have charms even for them.'

'Ah, but who will represent him? This puny generation does not produce such figures as Pylades and Bathyllus--except among those Goths. Besides, Apollo must have golden hair; and our Greek race has intermixed itself so shamefully with these Egyptians, that our stage-troop is as dark as Andromeda, and we should have to apply again to those accursed Goths, who have nearly' (with a bow) 'all the beauty, and nearly all the money and the power, and will, I suspect, have the rest of it before I am safe out of this wicked world, because they have not nearly, but quite, all the courage. Now--Shall we ask a Goth to dance Apollo? for we can get no one else.'

Hypatia smiled in spite of herself at the notion. 'That would be too shameful! I must forego the G.o.d of light himself, if I am to see him in the person of a clumsy barbarian.'

'Then why not try my despised and rejected Aphrodite? Suppose we had her triumph, finishing with a dance of Venus Anadyomene. Surely that is a graceful myth enough.'

'As a myth; but on the stage in reality?'

'Not worse than what this Christian city has been looking at for many a year. We shall not run any danger of corrupting morality, be sure.'

Hypatia blushed.

'Then you must not ask for my help.'

'Or for your presence at the spectacle? For that be sure is a necessary point. You are too great a person, my dearest madam, in the eyes of these good folks to be allowed to absent yourself on such an occasion. If my little stratagem succeeds, it will be half owing to the fact of the people knowing that in crowning me, they crown Hypatia .... Come now--do you not see that as you must needs be present at their harmless sc.r.a.p of mythology, taken from the authentic and undoubted histories of those very G.o.ds whose worship we intend to restore, you will consult your own comfort most in agreeing to it cheerfully, and in lending me your wisdom towards arranging it? Just conceive now, a triumph of Aphrodite, entering preceded by wild beasts led in chains by Cupids, the white elephant and all--what a field for the plastic art! You might have a thousand groupings, dispersions, regroupings, in as perfect bas- relief style as those of any Sophoclean drama. Allow me only to take this paper and pen--'

And he began sketching rapidly group after group.

'Not so ugly, surely?'

'They are very beautiful, I cannot deny,' said poor Hypatia.

'Ah, sweetest Empress! you forget sometimes that I, too, world-worm as I am, am a Greek, with as intense a love of the beautiful as even you yourself have. Do not fancy that every violation of correct taste does not torture me as keenly as it does you. Some day, I hope, you will have learned to pity and to excuse the wretched compromise between that which ought to be and that which can be, in which we hapless statesmen must struggle on, half-stunted, and wholly misunderstood--Ah, well! Look, now, at these fauns and dryads among the shrubs upon the stage, pausing in startled wonder at the first blast of music which proclaims the exit of the G.o.ddess from her temple.'

'The temple? Why, where are you going to exhibit?'

'In the Theatre, of course. Where else pantomimes?'

'But will the spectators have time to move all the way from the Amphitheatre after that--those--'

'The Amphitheatre? We shall exhibit the Libyans, too, in the Theatre.'

'Combats in the Theatre sacred to Dionusos?'

'My dear lady'--penitently--'I know it is an offence against all the laws of the drama.'

'Oh, worse than that! Consider what an impiety toward the G.o.d, to desecrate his altar with bloodshed?'

'Fairest devotee, recollect that, after all, I may fairly borrow Dionusos's altar in this my extreme need; for I saved its very existence for him, by preventing the magistrates from filling up the whole orchestra with benches for the patricians, after the barbarous Roman fashion. And besides, what possible sort of representation, or misrepresentation, has not been exhibited in every theatre of the empire for the last four hundred years? Have we not had tumblers, conjurers, allegories, martyrdoms, marriages, elephants on the tight-rope, learned horses, and learned a.s.ses too, if we may trust Apuleius of Madaura; with a good many other spectacles of which we must not speak in the presence of a vestal? It is an age of execrable taste, and we must act accordingly.'

'Ah!' answered Hypatia; 'the first step in the downward career of the drama began when the successors of Alexander dared to profane theatres which had re-echoed the choruses of Sophocles and Euripides by degrading the altar of Dionusos into a stage for pantomimes!'

'Which your pure mind must, doubtless, consider not so very much better than a little fighting. But, after all, the Ptolemies could not do otherwise. You can only have Sophoclean dramas in a Sophoclean age; and theirs was no more of one than ours is, and so the drama died a natural death; and when that happens to man or thing, you may weep over it if you will, but you must, after all, bury it, and get something else in its place--except, of course, the worship of the G.o.ds.'

'I am glad that you except that, at least,' said Hypatia, somewhat bitterly. 'But why not use the Amphitheatre for both spectacles?'

'What can I do? I am over head and ears in debt already; and the Amphitheatre is half in ruins, thanks to that fanatic edict of the late emperor's against gladiators. There is no time or money for repairing it; and besides, how pitiful a poor hundred of combatants will look in an arena built to hold two thousand! Consider, my dearest lady, in what fallen times we live!'

'I do, indeed!' said Hypatia. 'But I will not see the altar polluted by blood. It is the desecration which it has undergone already which has provoked the G.o.d to withdraw the poetic inspiration.'

'I do not doubt the fact. Some curse from Heaven, certainly, has fallen on our poets, to judge by their exceeding badness. Indeed, I am inclined to attribute the insane vagaries of the water-drinking monks and nuns, like those of the Argive women, to the same celestial anger. But I will see that the sanct.i.ty of the altar is preserved, by confining the combat to the stage. And as for the pantomime which will follow, if you would only fall in with my fancy of the triumph of Aphrodite, Dionusos would hardly refuse his altar for the glorification of his own lady-love.'

'Ah--that myth is a late, and in my opinion a degraded one.'

'Be it so; but recollect, that another myth makes her, and not without reason, the mother of all living beings. Be sure that Dionusos will have no objection, or any other G.o.d either, to allow her to make her children feel her conquering might; for they all know well enough, that if we can once get her well worshipped here, all Olympus will follow in her train.'

'That was spoken of the celestial Aphrodite, whose symbol is the tortoise, the emblem of domestic modesty and chast.i.ty: not of that baser Pandemic one.'

'Then we will take care to make the people aware of whom they are admiring by exhibiting in the triumph whole legions of tortoises: and you yourself shall write the chant, while I will see that the chorus is worthy of what it has to sing. No mere squeaking double flute and a pair of boys: but a whole army of cyclops and graces, with such trebles and such ba.s.s-voices! It shall make Cyril's ears tingle in his palace!'

'The chant! A n.o.ble office for me, truly! That is the very part of the absurd spectacle to which you used to say the people never dreamed of attending. All which is worth settling you seemed to have settled for yourself before you deigned to consult me.'

'I said so? Surely you must mistake. But if any hired poetaster's chant do pa.s.s unheeded, what has that to do with Hypatia's eloquence and science, glowing with the treble inspiration of Athene, Phoebus, and Dionusos? And as for having arranged beforehand--my adorable mistress, what more delicate compliment could I have paid you?'

'I cannot say that it seems to me to be one.'

'How? After saving you every trouble which I could, and racking my overburdened wits for stage effects and properties, have I not brought hither the darling children of my own brain, and laid them down ruthlessly, for life or death, before the judgment-seat of your lofty and unsparing criticism?'

Hypatia felt herself tricked: but there was no escape now.

'And who, pray, is to disgrace herself and me, as Venus Anadyomene?'

'Ah! that is the most exquisite article in all my bill of fare! What if the kind G.o.ds have enabled me to exact a promise from--whom, think you?'

'What care I? How can I tell?'asked Hypatia, who suspected and dreaded that she could tell.

'Pelagia herself!'

Hypatia rose angrily.

'This, sir, at least, is too much! It was not enough for you, it seems, to claim, or rather to take for granted, so imperiously, so mercilessly, a conditional promise--weakly, weakly made, in the vain hope that you would help forward aspirations of mine which you have let lie fallow for months--in which I do not believe that you sympathise now!--It was not enough for you to declare yourself publicly yesterday a Christian, and to come hither this morning to flatter me into the belief that you will dare, ten days hence, to restore the worship of the G.o.ds whom you have abjured!--It was not enough to plan without me all those movements in which you told me I was to be your fellow-counsellor--the very condition which you yourself offered!--It was not enough for you to command me to sit in that theatre, as your bait, your puppet, your victim, blushing and shuddering at sights unfit for the eyes of G.o.ds and men:--but, over and above all this, I must a.s.sist in the renewed triumph of a woman who has laughed down my teaching, seduced away my scholars, braved me in my very lecture-room--who for four years has done more than even Cyril himself to destroy all the virtue and truth which I have toiled to sow--and toiled in vain! Oh, beloved G.o.ds! where will end the tortures through which your martyr must witness for you to a fallen race?'

And, in spite of all her pride, and of Orestes's presence, her eyes filled with scalding tears.

Orestes's eyes had sunk before the vehemence of her just pa.s.sion; but as she added the last sentence in a softer and sadder tone, he raised them again, with a look of sorrow and entreaty as his heart whispered-- 'Fool!--fanatic! But she is too beautiful! Win her I must and will!'

'Ah! dearest, n.o.blest Hypatia! What have I done? Unthinking fool that I was! In the wish to save you trouble--In the hope that I could show you, by the aptness of my own plans, that my practical statesmanship was not altogether an unworthy helpmate for your loftier wisdom--wretch that I am, I have offended you; and I have ruined the cause of those very G.o.ds for whom, I swear, I am as ready to sacrifice myself as ever you can be!'

The last sentence had the effect which it was meant to have.

'Ruined the cause of the G.o.ds?'asked she, in a startled tone.

'Is it not ruined without your help? And what am I to understand from your words but that--hapless man that I am!--you leave me and them henceforth to our own una.s.sisted strength?'

'The una.s.sisted strength of the G.o.ds is omnipotence.'