The Tour Part 8

The stewards distributed money among the beggars. Lucius had gone on board. The slave-girls scattered flowers before his feet as he walked.

The song of the rowers was heard from the body of the boat. The creaking ropes were cast off; the barge glided towards the middle of the lake. She gleamed with blue, green and yellow lights and left a trail of brightness in her wake; the water was bright around her. On the banks the villas and palaces of light stood in gardens of light.

Hundreds of other barges were gliding slowly in the same direction. Above the monotonous drone of the rowers' song rang ballads and hymns. The music of citharas was heard in descending chords; the harps rang out; the notes of double flutes quavered through the evening air with a magic intoxication of melody.

The waters of the lake stood high. It was the month when the kindly Nile stepped outside its banks with a moist foot and overflowed the Delta. The golden waters of the lake lapped higher than the marble steps of the villas down which the brilliant hetairae descended, holding the lappets of their veils, to take their seats on the cushions of their barges.

Flowers fell on the water, in unison with the notes of hymn and song. All the craft, hundreds and hundreds, large and small, barges and coracles, square rafts and canoes, pressed gently forward towards the entrance of the Canopian Ca.n.a.l. On the banks were thousands of idlers and spectators, all the people of Alexandria.

The vessels glided to the harmony of the tw.a.n.ged strings into the broad ca.n.a.l. It was very full of water; the banks were flooded. Reeds tall as a man, biblos and cyamos, rose like pillars, blossoming during this month with thousands of waving plumes: the leaves of the biblos were long and bending over, as though each were languidly broken; those of the cyamos were round as scales and goblet-deep, stacked one above the other along the stems, like cups. [1] In the light on the barges, golden patches glowed among the stalks; and the reeds and rushes blossomed up as though out of molten gold.

Here lay the Canopian harbour, here the suburb of Eleusis; and the ca.n.a.l split into two branches. The narrower channel led to Schedia, on the Nile; the broader led past Nicopolis to Canopus.

Beyond stretched the sea, wide and blue. Only a narrow strip of land separated it from the ca.n.a.l; and it lay boundless under a thousand twinkling stars.

"Lucius," said Thrasyllus, sitting spell-bound at the feet of the young Roman, who sat on a raised throne and gazed in front of him like a priest, full of longing for his dream of that night, "Lucius, my Lord Catullus, look! We have pa.s.sed Nicopolis, with its amphitheatre and stadium; and yonder lies Taposiris, with Cape Zephyrium; and on a height I can see the temple of Aphrodite Arsinoe."

"I see," said Lucius, turning his eyes towards the temple, which was lit with lines of fire and rose above the water like a mansion in Olympus.

"I see," echoed Uncle Catullus, seated by Lucius' side.

"I was reading," Thrasyllus explained, "that at the same place where that temple now stands there once stood the city of Thonis, named after the king who hospitably entreated Menelaus and Helen. Homer mentions it and speaks of the secret herbs and precious balsams which Helen received from Queen Polyd.a.m.na, Thonis' spouse."

"You know everything, Thrasyllus," said Uncle Catullus, warmly, "and it is a joy to travel with you."

"Tell the slave from Cos to sing the Hymn to Aphrodite as we row past the G.o.ddess' temple," said Lucius.

Thrasyllus went to Cora and communicated the master's order. Forthwith a group of singers and dancers rose to their feet. Cora herself struck the resounding chords. And she sang:

"Mother of Eros, hear thy slave!

"Child of the foam, great G.o.ddess of love, Aphrodite, look down from above!

Thou, who dost madden the G.o.ds with desire, Thou, who fulfillest men's hearts with thy fire, All but the heart of my lord that I crave, Hark to thy slave!"

She stood as one inspired while she sang, with her fingers on the chords, facing the temple. Around her the girls danced to the song. The movements of their lithe bodies, light as the ripple of a silken scarf in the breeze, met and dissolved in picture after picture with each word of the song. The singer's voice swelled crystal-clear. From the bank of the ca.n.a.l, from the open houses, on the temple-steps the people listened to her song. In the tall reeds lay smaller boats, wherein a man and woman embraced in love. Their hands thrust aside the yielding stems; and their smiles glanced at Cora.

"All but the heart of my lord that I crave, Hark to thy slave!"

the other singers now sang after her.

"She sings well," said Lucius.

Cora heard him. She blushed crimson between the great rose-coloured flowers at her temples. But she behaved as though she had heard nothing. And she sat down quietly among her companions, at the foot of the silver statue of Aphrodite.

The barge glided on slowly with the others. From all of them, in turns, came music. The water of the flooding ca.n.a.l was like a broad golden mirror. On the bank, between the stalks of the tall reeds, the open taverns and brothels rose, wreathed in flowers, as from an enchanted lake. The women in them beckoned and waved with long lotus-stems.

But the barges glided on, towards Canopus. They were all going to the temple of Serapis. Not until after the dreams would the brothels and taverns be visited. The orgy was to come after the dream.

CHAPTER IX

In the strange bright summer night of light, lit by the sheen of the stars and the glow of the lamps, Canopus rose amid its slender obelisks and its spreading palm-trees. The barges lay moored to the long quay, one beside the other. One solemn train of pilgrims after another flowed down the street to the temple of Serapis. The town was alive with the whisper of music and aglow with illumination.

It was mid-night. From the temple of Serapis heavy gong-strokes sounded, like a divine, golden thunder rolling at regular intervals under the stars. The singing processions, bathed in torchlight, streamed towards the temple.

There was a wide avenue paved with large, square stones. This avenue, or dromos, led to the sanctuary, the temenos, along a double row of immense basalt sphinxes, half woman, half lioness; half man, half bull. They were drawn up like superhuman sentinels that had turned to stone; and their great human faces stared raptly into the night. In between the sphinxes, the coloured lamps and lanterns blossomed like lotus-flowers, glowing blue, red and yellow.

The processions streamed into the dromos at pilgrims' pace. Through the dromos they reached the first propylaeum, then the second, the third, the fourth. These consisted of a gigantic series of heavy pylons, painted with hieroglyphics: a veritable forest of pylon-trunks rising in serried ranks of frowning columns and crowned with heavy architraves which seemed to support the starry realm of the summer night itself. Through these endless rows of pillars the dense mult.i.tude of pilgrims in search of their dreams marched to the music of hymns. It marched with its steady, slow, regular, religious tread. And monotonous as the rhythm of its march was the melody of its hymn, borne upon ever the same harp-chords.

Lucius' procession marched with the others. He walked gravely, with Catullus by his side; Thrasyllus followed; the slaves, male and female, followed. In front of him strode his musicians, singers and dancers. And Cora's voice rose only a little higher in the ever-repeated hymn to the G.o.d Serapis.

The temple itself produced a sense of infinity. An immense fore-court, or p.r.o.naos, soared on high with its pillars, a forest of pylons crowned by the roof, with its painted hieroglyphics. The p.r.o.naos gave admittance to the sanctuary, the holy of holies, an immeasurable empty s.p.a.ce, without image, without altar, without anything. Nevertheless as it were a mysterious sanct.i.ty descended here, because of the height, the impressive, colossal dimensions. The "wings," or pteres, the two side-walls, sculptured with symbolic bas-reliefs, painted gold, azure and scarlet, approached each other with slanting lines in a mystic perspective, where a cloud of fragrance hovered like a conflagration. Behind this the holy of holies lost itself, the abode of the G.o.d, of Serapis; invisible the statue. A swarm of acolytes, zacori and neocori, were officiating on ascending stairs, in worship before close-drawn hyacinth curtains.

The processions divided themselves along the wings, the side-walls, as directed by the temple-keepers' wands. It was as though a broad stream were dividing into two rivers. At the end of the wings, behind the holy of holies, flights of stairs widened in the open night, leading to terraces, the one ever higher than the other, so that they could not be overlooked. The golden gong-strokes solemnly rolled and thundered, echoing heavily and loudly.

Over the terraces, in a constant round, up and down, marched the chief priests, the hieropsalts, the hieroscopes, the hierogrammats, the pastophors, the sphagists and the stolists. The hieropsalts sang the hymns to the sacred harps; the hieroscopes prophesied from the entrails of victims; the hierogrammats guarded the secrets of the Hermetic wisdom; the pastophors carried the images of Anubis, with the dog's head, in silver boats; the sphagists were the sacrificial priests; the stolists served the sacred images, adorned them, tended them with ever clean and perfumed hands. But among the hierogrammats strode the prophets. They had beheld the G.o.dhead face to face; they knew the past and the future, they knew the meaning of the sacred dreams. They were very holy; and the oldest of them were most holy. Whenever they approached, the people sank to the ground and kissed the pavement, with hands uplifted.

The sacred hour approached, the hour when Serapis would send the sacred dreams from heaven, out of the sun itself, when all the procession would have streamed in, when the gates of the dromos would have slammed with their ponderous monolithic doors, when the last gong-stroke would clatter away in the sacred night.

From the terraces the town, the ca.n.a.l, and the lake lay visible as in one golden shimmer of lights. But on the terraces themselves suddenly an incredible stillness reigned. Not a voice, not a rustle sounded from out of that mult.i.tude of thousands. And on the granite pavement the pilgrims were stretched one beside the other.

In between the rows the temple-keepers moved, the neocori. And they bent incessantly over the pilgrims and covered them with the dreaming-nets and -veils, while zacori slung the censers. A heavy, intoxicating perfume of almost stifling aromatic vapour was wafted through the air.

Suddenly, through the silence, the harps of the hieropsalts struck the sacred chord.

There was a short hymn, one single phrase, which melted away.

On the vast terraces the mult.i.tude of the thousands of pilgrims lay motionless under nets and veils, their eyes closed. Not a sound came from the illuminated city. The sacred silence reigned wide and mystic, fraught with terror, over the sea, along the starry sky, over the city and the temple. For Serapis, invisible, was rising from the underworld, to bring the dreams.

He rose in a cloud of dreams, out of the sacred, subterranean h.e.l.l, where he reigns even as Osiris reigns in high Heaven. He is Osiris himself; between him and Osiris there is no difference. He is two. While Osiris is the benevolent Almighty above, he is the benevolent Almighty below. He opposes Typhon, even as Osiris combated Typhon. Victory falls to him in the end, even as it did to Osiris.

Now he rises, in the cloud of dreams. For it is his feast, the feast of his kindly waters, which he pours in summer rains from the sacred vessels wherewith the dog's-head of Anubis, his watchman, servant and comrade, is crowned, the waters which he pours into the sacred stream, so that it may flood sacred Egypt. Now he rises in the cloud of dreams.

The earth splits and Serapis rises from the subterranean h.e.l.l. He is everything, even as Osiris is. He is feminine, Neith, the beginning, and masculine, Ammon, eternity. He is what the last will be. And he cannot be other than the benefactor. He makes the dreams hover like b.u.t.terflies around the foreheads of those who believe in him. His healing power makes whole the sick. He pours the secret of that healing into the minds of the servants of sufferers who shall dream in their masters' stead. His dreams advise what must be done or left undone to achieve prosperity, fortune, consideration, happiness and love.

And he will make Lusius dream where to find a beloved woman who has disappeared....

In the silence the young Roman lies, covered with a gold network, like a precious mummy, straight out, his arms beside his body, his eyes shut. Near him lie all his followers.