{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_4057/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_4057","id":"gutenberg_4057","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4057","summary":null,"tags":["Bildungsromans","Category: British Literature","Category: Novels","Christian fiction","Christianity and other religions -- Roman -- Fiction","Historical Fiction","Historical fiction","Rome -- Fiction","Young men -- Fiction"],"text":"Marius the Epicurean\n\nHIS SENSATIONS AND IDEAS\n\nby WALTER PATER\n\nVOLUME ONE\n\nLondon: 1910.\n(The Library Edition.)\n\n\nContents\n\n PART THE FIRST\n 1. \u201cThe Religion of Numa\u201d\n 2. White-Nights\n 3. Change of Air\n 4. The Tree of Knowledge\n 5. The Golden Book\n 6. Euphuism\n 7. A Pagan End\n\n PART THE SECOND\n 8. Animula Vagula\n 9. New Cyrenaicism\n 10. On the Way\n 11. \u201cThe Most Religious City in the World\u201d\n 12. \u201cThe Divinity that Doth Hedge a King\u201d\n 13. The \u201cMistress and Mother\u201d of Palaces\n 14. Manly Amusement\n\n\nNOTES BY THE E-TEXT EDITOR:\n\nNotes: I have placed an asterisk immediately after each of Pater\u2019s\nfootnotes and a + sign after my own notes, and have listed each of my\nnotes at that chapter\u2019s end.\n\nGreek typeface: For this full-text edition, I have transliterated\nPater\u2019s Greek quotations. If there is a need for the original Greek, it\ncan be viewed at my site, http://www.ajdrake.com/etexts, a Victorianist\narchive that contains the complete works of Walter Pater and many other\nnineteenth-century texts, mostly in first editions.\n\nMARIUS THE EPICUREAN,\nVOLUME ONE\nWALTER PATER\n\n\n\u03a7\u03b5\u03b9\u03bc\u03b5\u03c1\u03b9\u03bd\u1f78\u03c2 \u1f44\u03bd\u03b5\u03b9\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2, \u1f45\u03c4\u03b5 \u03bc\u03ae\u03ba\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 \u03b1\u1f31 \u03bd\u03cd\u03ba\u03c4\u03b5\u03c2+\n\n\n+\u201cA winter\u2019s dream, when nights are longest.\u201d\nLucian, The Dream, Vol. 3.\n\n\nMARIUS THE EPICUREAN, VOLUME ONE\n\n\n\n\nPART THE FIRST\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\u201cTHE RELIGION OF NUMA\u201d\n\n\nAs, in the triumph of Christianity, the old religion lingered latest in\nthe country, and died out at last as but paganism\u2014the religion of the\nvillagers, before the advance of the Christian Church; so, in an\nearlier century, it was in places remote from town-life that the older\nand purer forms of paganism itself had survived the longest. While, in\nRome, new religions had arisen with bewildering complexity around the\ndying old one, the earlier and simpler patriarchal religion, \u201cthe\nreligion of Numa,\u201d as people loved to fancy, lingered on with little\nchange amid the pastoral life, out of the habits and sentiment of which\nso much of it had grown. Glimpses of such a survival we may catch below\nthe merely artificial attitudes of Latin pastoral poetry; in Tibullus\nespecially, who has preserved for us many poetic details of old Roman\nreligious usage.\n\nAt mihi contingat patrios celebrare Penates,\nReddereque antiquo menstrua thura Lari:\n\n\n\u2014he prays, with unaffected seriousness. Something liturgical, with\nrepetitions of a consecrated form of words, is traceable in one of his\nelegies, as part of the order of a birthday sacrifice. The hearth, from\na spark of which, as one form of old legend related, the child Romulus\nhad been miraculously born, was still indeed an altar; and the\nworthiest sacrifice to the gods the perfect physical sanity of the\nyoung men and women, which the scrupulous ways of that religion of the\nhearth had tended to maintain. A religion of usages and sentiment\nrather than of facts and belief, and attached to very definite things\nand places\u2014the oak of immemorial age, the rock on the heath fashioned\nby weather as if by some dim human art, the shadowy grove of ilex,\npassing into which one exclaimed involuntarily, in consecrated phrase,\nDeity is in this Place! Numen Inest!\u2014it was in natural harmony with the\ntemper of a quiet people amid the spectacle of rural life, like that\nsimpler faith between man and man, which Tibullus expressly connects\nwith the period when, with an inexpensive worship, the old wooden gods\nhad been still pressed for room in their homely little shrines.\n\nAnd about the time when the dying Antoninus Pius ordered his golden\nimage of Fortune to be carried into the chamber of his successor (now\nabout to test the truth of the old Platonic contention, that the world\nwould at last find itself happy, could it detach some reluctant\nphilosophic student from the more desirable life of celestial\ncontemplation, and compel him to rule it), there was a boy living in an\nold country-house, half farm, half villa, who, for himself, recruited\nthat body of antique traditions by a spontaneous force of religious\nveneration such as had originally called them into being. More than a\ncentury and a half had past since Tibullus had written; but the\nrestoration of religious usages, and their retention where they still\nsurvived, was meantime come to be the fashion through the influence of\nimperial example; and what had been in the main a matter of family\npride with his father, was sustained by a native instinct of devotion\nin the young Marius. A sense of conscious powers external to ourselves,\npleased or displeased by the right or wrong conduct of every\ncircumstance of daily life\u2014that conscience, of which the old Roman\nreligion was a formal, habitual recognition, was become in him a\npowerful current of feeling and observance. The old-fashioned, partly\npuritanic awe, the power of which Wordsworth noted and valued so highly\nin a northern peasantry, had its counterpart in the feeling of the\nRoman lad, as he passed the spot, \u201ctouched of heaven,\u201d where the\nlightning had struck dead an aged labourer in the field: an upright\nstone, still with mouldering garlands about it, marked the place. He\nbrought to that system of symbolic usages, and they in turn developed\nin him further, a great seriousness\u2014an impressibility to the sacredness\nof time, of life and its events, and the circumstances of family\nfellowship; of such gifts to men as fire, water, the earth, from labour\non which they live, really understood by him as gifts\u2014a sense of\nreligious responsibility in the reception of them. It was a religion\nfor the most part of fear, of multitudinous scruples, of a year-long\nburden of forms; yet rarely (on clear summer mornings, for instance)\nthe thought of those heavenly powers afforded a welcome channel for the\nalmost stifling sense of health and delight in him, and relieved it as\ngratitude to the gods.\n\nThe day of the \u201clittle\u201d or private Ambarvalia was come, to be\ncelebrated by a single family for the welfare of all belonging to it,\nas the great college of the Arval Brothers officiated at Rome in the\ninterest of the whole state. At the appointed time all work ceases; the\ninstruments of labour lie untouched, hung with wreaths of flowers,\nwhile masters and servants together go in solemn procession along the\ndry paths of vineyard and cornfield, conducting the victims whose blood\nis presently to be shed for the purification from all natural or\nsupernatural taint of the lands they have \u201cgone about.\u201d The old Latin\nwords of the liturgy, to be said as the procession moved on its way,\nthough their precise meaning was long since become unintelligible, were\nrecited from an ancient illuminated roll, kept in the painted chest in\nthe hall, together with the family records. Early on that day the girls\nof the farm had been busy in the great portico, filling large baskets\nwith flowers plucked short from branches of apple and cherry, then in\nspacious bloom, to strew before the quaint images of the gods\u2014Ceres and\nBacchus and the yet more mysterious Dea Dia\u2014as they passed through the\nfields, carried in their little houses on the shoulders of white-clad\nyouths, who were understood to proceed to this office in perfect\ntemperance, as pure in soul and body as the air they breathed in the\nfirm weather of that early summer-time. The clean lustral water and the\nfull incense-box were carried after them. The altars were gay with\ngarlands of wool and the more sumptuous sort of blossom and green herbs\nto be thrown into the sacrificial fire, fresh-gathered this morning\nfrom a particular plot in the old garden, set apart for the purpose.\nJust then the young leaves were almost as fragrant as flowers, and the\nscent of the bean-fields mingled pleasantly with the cloud of incense.\nBut for the monotonous intonation of the liturgy by the priests, clad\nin their strange, stiff, antique vestments, and bearing ears of green\ncorn upon their heads, secured by flowing bands of white, the\nprocession moved in absolute stillness, all persons, even the children,\nabstaining from speech after the utterance of the pontifical formula,\nFavete linguis!\u2014Silence! Propitious Silence!\u2014lest any words save those\nproper to the occasion should hinder the religious efficacy of the\nrite.\n\nWith the lad Marius, who, as the head of his house, took a leading part\nin the ceremonies of the day, there was a devout effort to complete\nthis impressive outward silence by that inward tacitness of mind,\nesteemed so important by religious Romans in the performance of these\nsacred functions. To him the sustained stillness without seemed really\nbut to be waiting upon that interior, mental condition of preparation\nor expectancy, for which he was just then intently striving. The\npersons about him, certainly, had never been challenged by those\nprayers and ceremonies to any ponderings on the divine nature: they\nconceived them rather to be the appointed means of setting such\ntroublesome movements at rest. By them, \u201cthe religion of Numa,\u201d so\nstaid, ideal and comely, the object of so much jealous conservatism,\nthough of direct service as lending sanction to a sort of high\nscrupulosity, especially in the chief points of domestic conduct, was\nmainly prized as being, through its hereditary character, something\nlike a personal distinction\u2014as contributing, among the other\naccessories of an ancient house, to the production of that aristocratic\natmosphere which separated them from newly-made people. But in the\nyoung Marius, the very absence from those venerable usages of all\ndefinite history and dogmatic interpretation, had already awakened much\nspeculative activity; and to-day, starting from the actual details of\nthe divine service, some very lively surmises, though scarcely distinct\nenough to be thoughts, were moving backwards and forwards in his mind,\nas the stirring wind had done all day among the trees, and were like\nthe passing of some mysterious influence over all the elements of his\nnature and experience. One thing only distracted him\u2014a certain pity at\nthe bottom of his heart, and almost on his lips, for the sacrificial\nvictims and their looks of terror, rising almost to disgust at the\ncentral act of the sacrifice itself, a piece of everyday butcher\u2019s\nwork, such as we decorously hide out of sight; though some then present\ncertainly displayed a frank curiosity in the spectacle thus permitted\nthem on a religious pretext. The old sculptors of the great procession\non the frieze of the Parthenon at Athens, have delineated the placid\nheads of the victims led in it to sacrifice, with a perfect feeling for\nanimals in forcible contrast with any indifference as to their\nsufferings. It was this contrast that distracted Marius now in the\nblessing of his fields, and qualified his devout absorption upon the\nscrupulous fulfilment of all the details of the ceremonial, as the\nprocession approached the altars.\n\nThe names of that great populace of \u201clittle gods,\u201d dear to the Roman\nhome, which the pontiffs had placed on the sacred list of the\nIndigitamenta, to be invoked, because they can help, on special\noccasions, were not forgotten in the long litany\u2014Vatican who causes the\ninfant to utter his first cry, Fabulinus who prompts his first word,\nCuba who keeps him quiet in his cot, Domiduca especially, for whom\nMarius had through life a particular memory and devotion, the goddess\nwho watches over one\u2019s safe coming home. The urns of the dead in the\nfamily chapel received their due service. They also were now become\nsomething divine, a goodly company of friendly and protecting spirits,\nencamped about the place of their former abode\u2014above all others, the\nfather, dead ten years before, of whom, remembering but a tall, grave\nfigure above him in early childhood, Marius habitually thought as a\ngenius a little cold and severe.\n\nCandidus insuetum miratur limen Olympi,\nSub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera.\u2014\n\n\nPerhaps!\u2014but certainly needs his altar here below, and garlands to-day\nupon his urn. But the dead genii were satisfied with little\u2014a few\nviolets, a cake dipped in wine, or a morsel of honeycomb. Daily, from\nthe time when his childish footsteps were still uncertain, had Marius\ntaken them their portion of the family meal, at the second course,\namidst the silence of the company. They loved those who brought them\ntheir sustenance; but, deprived of these services, would be heard\nwandering through the house, crying sorrowfully in the stillness of the\nnight.\n\nAnd those simple gifts, like other objects as trivial\u2014bread, oil, wine,\nmilk\u2014had regained for him, by their use in such religious service, that\npoetic and as it were moral significance, which surely belongs to all\nthe means of daily life, could we but break through the veil of our\nfamiliarity with things by no means vulgar in themselves. A hymn\nfollowed, while the whole assembly stood with veiled faces. The fire\nrose up readily from the altars, in clean, bright flame\u2014a favourable\nomen, making it a duty to render the mirth of the evening complete. Old\nwine was poured out freely for the servants at supper in the great\nkitchen, where they had worked in the imperfect light through the long\nevenings of winter. The young Marius himself took but a very sober part\nin the noisy feasting. A devout, regretful after-taste of what had been\nreally beautiful in the ritual he had accomplished took him early away,\nthat he might the better recall in reverie all the circumstances of the\ncelebration of the day. As he sank into a sleep, pleasant with all the\ninfluences of long hours in the open air, he seemed still to be moving\nin procession through the fields, with a kind of pleasurable awe. That\nfeeling was still upon him as he awoke amid the beating of violent rain\non the shutters, in the first storm of the season. The thunder which\nstartled him from sleep seemed to make the solitude of his chamber\nalmost painfully complete, as if the nearness of those angry clouds\nshut him up in a close place alone in the world. Then he thought of the\nsort of protection which that day\u2019s ceremonies assured. To procure an\nagreement with the gods\u2014Pacem deorum exposcere: that was the meaning of\nwhat they had all day been busy upon. In a faith, sincere but\nhalf-suspicious, he would fain have those Powers at least not against\nhim. His own nearer household gods were all around his bed. The spell\nof his religion as a part of the very essence of home, its intimacy,\nits dignity and security, was forcible at that moment; only, it seemed\nto involve certain heavy demands upon him.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\nWHITE-NIGHTS\n\n\nTo an instinctive seriousness, the material abode in which the\nchildhood of Marius was passed had largely added. Nothing, you felt, as\nyou first caught sight of that coy, retired place,\u2014surely nothing could\nhappen there, without its full accompaniment of thought or reverie.\nWhite-nights! so you might interpret its old Latin name.* \u201cThe red rose\ncame first,\u201d says a quaint German mystic, speaking of \u201cthe mystery of\nso-called white things,\u201d as being \u201cever an after-thought\u2014the doubles,\nor seconds, of real things, and themselves but half-real,\nhalf-material\u2014the white queen, the white witch, the white mass, which,\nas the black mass is a travesty of the true mass turned to evil by\nhorrible old witches, is celebrated by young candidates for the\npriesthood with an unconsecrated host, by way of rehearsal.\u201d So,\nwhite-nights, I suppose, after something like the same analogy, should\nbe nights not of quite blank forgetfulness, but passed in continuous\ndreaming, only half veiled by sleep. Certainly the place was, in such\ncase, true to its fanciful name in this, that you might very well\nconceive, in face of it, that dreaming even in the daytime might come\nto much there.\n\n* _Ad Vigilias Albas_.\n\n\nThe young Marius represented an ancient family whose estate had come\ndown to him much curtailed through the extravagance of a certain\nMarcellus two generations before, a favourite in his day of the\nfashionable world at Rome, where he had at least spent his substance\nwith a correctness of taste Marius might seem to have inherited from\nhim; as he was believed also to resemble him in a singularly pleasant\nsmile, consistent however, in the younger face, with some degree of\nsombre expression when the mind within was but slightly moved.\n\nAs the means of life decreased, the farm had crept nearer and nearer to\nthe dwelling-house, about which there was therefore a trace of workday\nnegligence or homeliness, not without its picturesque charm for some,\nfor the young master himself among them. The more observant passer-by\nwould note, curious as to the inmates, a certain amount of dainty care\namid that neglect, as if it came in part, perhaps, from a reluctance to\ndisturb old associations. It was significant of the national character,\nthat a sort of elegant gentleman farming, as we say, had been much\naffected by some of the most cultivated Romans. But it became something\nmore than an elegant diversion, something of a serious business, with\nthe household of Marius; and his actual interest in the cultivation of\nthe earth and the care of flocks had brought him, at least, intimately\nnear to those elementary conditions of life, a reverence for which, the\ngreat Roman poet, as he has shown by his own half-mystic pre-occupation\nwith them, held to be the ground of primitive Roman religion, as of\nprimitive morals. But then, farm-life in Italy, including the culture\nof the olive and the vine, has a grace of its own, and might well\ncontribute to the production of an ideal dignity of character, like\nthat of nature itself in this gifted region. Vulgarity seemed\nimpossible. The place, though impoverished, was still deservedly dear,\nfull of venerable memories, and with a living sweetness of its own for\nto-day.\n\nTo hold by such ceremonial traditions had been a part of the struggling\nfamily pride of the lad\u2019s father, to which the example of the head of\nthe state, old Antoninus Pius\u2014an example to be still further enforced\nby his successor\u2014had given a fresh though perhaps somewhat artificial\npopularity. It had been consistent with many another homely and\nold-fashioned trait in him, not to undervalue the charm of\nexclusiveness and immemorial authority, which membership in a local\npriestly college, hereditary in his house, conferred upon him. To set a\nreal value on these things was but one element in that pious concern\nfor his home and all that belonged to it, which, as Marius afterwards\ndiscovered, had been a strong motive with his father. The ancient\nhymn\u2014Fana Novella!\u2014was still sung by his people, as the new moon grew\nbright in the west, and even their wild custom of leaping through heaps\nof blazing straw on a certain night in summer was not discouraged. The\nprivilege of augury itself, according to tradition, had at one time\nbelonged to his race; and if you can imagine how, once in a way, an\nimpressible boy might have an inkling, an inward mystic intimation, of\nthe meaning and consequences of all that, what was implied in it\nbecoming explicit for him, you conceive aright the mind of Marius, in\nwhose house the auspices were still carefully consulted before every\nundertaking of moment.\n\nThe devotion of the father then had handed on loyally\u2014and that is all\nmany not unimportant persons ever find to do\u2014a certain tradition of\nlife, which came to mean much for the young Marius. The feeling with\nwhich he thought of his dead father was almost exclusively that of awe;\nthough crossed at times by a not unpleasant sense of liberty, as he\ncould but confess to himself, pondering, in the actual absence of so\nweighty and continual a restraint, upon the arbitrary power which Roman\nreligion and Roman law gave to the parent over the son. On the part of\nhis mother, on the other hand, entertaining the husband\u2019s memory, there\nwas a sustained freshness of regret, together with the recognition, as\nMarius fancied, of some costly self-sacrifice to be credited to the\ndead. The life of the widow, languid and shadowy enough but for the\npoignancy of that regret, was like one long service to the departed\nsoul; its many annual observances centering about the funeral urn\u2014a\ntiny, delicately carved marble house, still white and fair, in the\nfamily-chapel, wreathed always with the richest flowers from the\ngarden. To the dead, in fact, was conceded in such places a somewhat\ncloser neighbourhood to the old homes they were thought still to\nprotect, than is usual with us, or was usual in Rome itself\u2014a closeness\nwhich the living welcomed, so diverse are the ways of our human\nsentiment, and in which the more wealthy, at least in the country,\nmight indulge themselves. All this Marius followed with a devout\ninterest, sincerely touched and awed by his mother\u2019s sorrow. After the\ndeification of the emperors, we are told, it was considered impious so\nmuch as to use any coarse expression in the presence of their images.\nTo Marius the whole of life seemed full of sacred presences, demanding\nof him a similar collectedness. The severe and archaic religion of the\nvilla, as he conceived it, begot in him a sort of devout circumspection\nlest he should fall short at any point of the demand upon him of\nanything in which deity was concerned. He must satisfy with a kind of\nsacred equity, he must be very cautious lest he be found wanting to,\nthe claims of others, in their joys and calamities\u2014the happiness which\ndeity sanctioned, or the blows in which it made itself felt. And from\nhabit, this feeling of a responsibility towards the world of men and\nthings, towards a claim for due sentiment concerning them on his side,\ncame to be a part of his nature not to be put off. It kept him serious\nand dignified amid the Epicurean speculations which in after years much\nengrossed him, and when he had learned to think of all religions as\nindifferent, serious amid many fopperies and through many languid days,\nand made him anticipate all his life long as a thing towards which he\nmust carefully train himself, some great occasion of self-devotion,\nsuch as really came, that should consecrate his life, and, it might be,\nits memory with others, as the early Christian looked forward to\nmartyrdom at the end of his course, as a seal of worth upon it.\n\nThe traveller, descending from the slopes of Luna, even as he got his\nfirst view of the Port-of-Venus, would pause by the way, to read the\nface, as it were, of so beautiful a dwelling-place, lying away from the\nwhite road, at the point where it began to decline somewhat steeply to\nthe marsh-land below. The building of pale red and yellow marble,\nmellowed by age, which he saw beyond the gates, was indeed but the\nexquisite fragment of a once large and sumptuous villa. Two centuries\nof the play of the sea-wind were in the velvet of the mosses which lay\nalong its inaccessible ledges and angles. Here and there the marble\nplates had slipped from their places, where the delicate weeds had\nforced their way. The graceful wildness which prevailed in garden and\nfarm gave place to a singular nicety about the actual habitation, and a\nstill more scrupulous sweetness and order reigned within. The old Roman\narchitects seem to have well understood the decorative value of the\nfloor\u2014the real economy there was, in the production of rich interior\neffect, of a somewhat lavish expenditure upon the surface they trod on.\nThe pavement of the hall had lost something of its evenness; but,\nthough a little rough to the foot, polished and cared for like a piece\nof silver, looked, as mosaic-work is apt to do, its best in old age.\nMost noticeable among the ancestral masks, each in its little cedarn\nchest below the cornice, was that of the wasteful but elegant\nMarcellus, with the quaint resemblance in its yellow waxen features to\nMarius, just then so full of animation and country colour. A chamber,\ncurved ingeniously into oval form, which he had added to the mansion,\nstill contained his collection of works of art; above all, that head of\nMedusa, for which the villa was famous. The spoilers of one of the old\nGreek towns on the coast had flung away or lost the thing, as it\nseemed, in some rapid flight across the river below, from the sands of\nwhich it was drawn up in a fisherman\u2019s net, with the fine golden\nlaminae still clinging here and there to the bronze. It was Marcellus\nalso who had contrived the prospect-tower of two storeys with the white\npigeon-house above, so characteristic of the place. The little glazed\nwindows in the uppermost chamber framed each its dainty landscape\u2014the\npallid crags of Carrara, like wildly twisted snow-drifts above the\npurple heath; the distant harbour with its freight of white marble\ngoing to sea; the lighthouse temple of Venus Speciosa on its dark\nheadland, amid the long-drawn curves of white breakers. Even on summer\nnights the air there had always a motion in it, and drove the scent of\nthe new-mown hay along all the passages of the house.\n\nSomething pensive, spell-bound, and but half real, something cloistral\nor monastic, as we should say, united to this exquisite order, made the\nwhole place seem to Marius, as it were, sacellum, the peculiar\nsanctuary, of his mother, who, still in real widowhood, provided the\ndeceased Marius the elder with that secondary sort of life which we can\ngive to the dead, in our intensely realised memory of them\u2014the\n\u201csubjective immortality,\u201d to use a modern phrase, for which many a\nRoman epitaph cries out plaintively to widow or sister or daughter,\nstill in the land of the living. Certainly, if any such considerations\nregarding them do reach the shadowy people, he enjoyed that secondary\nexistence, that warm place still left, in thought at least, beside the\nliving, the desire for which is actually, in various forms, so great a\nmotive with most of us. And Marius the younger, even thus early, came\nto think of women\u2019s tears, of women\u2019s hands to lay one to rest, in\ndeath as in the sleep of childhood, as a sort of natural want. The soft\nlines of the white hands and face, set among the many folds of the veil\nand stole of the Roman widow, busy upon her needlework, or with music\nsometimes, defined themselves for him as the typical expression of\nmaternity. Helping her with her white and purple wools, and caring for\nher musical instruments, he won, as if from the handling of such\nthings, an urbane and feminine refinement, qualifying duly his\ncountry-grown habits\u2014the sense of a certain delicate blandness, which\nhe relished, above all, on returning to the \u201cchapel\u201d of his mother,\nafter long days of open-air exercise, in winter or stormy summer. For\npoetic souls in old Italy felt, hardly less strongly than the English,\nthe pleasures of winter, of the hearth, with the very dead warm in its\ngenerous heat, keeping the young myrtles in flower, though the hail is\nbeating hard without. One important principle, of fruit afterwards in\nhis Roman life, that relish for the country fixed deeply in him; in the\nwinters especially, when the sufferings of the animal world became so\npalpable even to the least observant. It fixed in him a sympathy for\nall creatures, for the almost human troubles and sicknesses of the\nflocks, for instance. It was a feeling which had in it something of\nreligious veneration for life as such\u2014for that mysterious essence which\nman is powerless to create in even the feeblest degree. One by one, at\nthe desire of his mother, the lad broke down his cherished traps and\nspringes for the hungry wild birds on the salt marsh. A white bird, she\ntold him once, looking at him gravely, a bird which he must carry in\nhis bosom across a crowded public place\u2014his own soul was like that!\nWould it reach the hands of his good genius on the opposite side,\nunruffled and unsoiled? And as his mother became to him the very type\nof maternity in things, its unfailing pity and protectiveness, and\nmaternity itself the central type of all love;\u2014so, that beautiful\ndwelling-place lent the reality of concrete outline to a peculiar ideal\nof home, which throughout the rest of his life he seemed, amid many\ndistractions of spirit, to be ever seeking to regain.\n\nAnd a certain vague fear of evil, constitutional in him, enhanced still\nfurther this sentiment of home as a place of tried security. His\nreligion, that old Italian religion, in contrast with the really\nlight-hearted religion of Greece, had its deep undercurrent of gloom,\nits sad, haunting imageries, not exclusively confined to the walls of\nEtruscan tombs. The function of the conscience, not always as the\nprompter of gratitude for benefits received, but oftenest as his\naccuser before those angry heavenly masters, had a large part in it;\nand the sense of some unexplored evil, ever dogging his footsteps, made\nhim oddly suspicious of particular places and persons. Though his\nliking for animals was so strong, yet one fierce day in early summer,\nas he walked along a narrow road, he had seen the snakes breeding, and\never afterwards avoided that place and its ugly associations, for there\nwas something in the incident which made food distasteful and his sleep\nuneasy for many days afterwards. The memory of it however had almost\npassed away, when at the corner of a street in Pisa, he came upon an\nAfrican showman exhibiting a great serpent: once more, as the reptile\nwrithed, the former painful impression revived: it was like a peep into\nthe lower side of the real world, and again for many days took all\nsweetness from food and sleep. He wondered at himself indeed, trying to\npuzzle out the secret of that repugnance, having no particular dread of\na snake\u2019s bite, like one of his companions, who had put his hand into\nthe mouth of an old garden-god and roused there a sluggish viper. A\nkind of pity even mingled with his aversion, and he could hardly have\nkilled or injured the animals, which seemed already to suffer by the\nvery circumstance of their life, being what they were. It was something\nlike a fear of the supernatural, or perhaps rather a moral feeling, for\nthe face of a great serpent, with no grace of fur or feathers, so\ndifferent from quadruped or bird, has a sort of humanity of aspect in\nits spotted and clouded nakedness. There was a humanity, dusty and\nsordid and as if far gone in corruption, in the sluggish coil, as it\nawoke suddenly into one metallic spring of pure enmity against him.\nLong afterwards, when it happened that at Rome he saw, a second time, a\nshowman with his serpents, he remembered the night which had then\nfollowed, thinking, in Saint Augustine\u2019s vein, on the real greatness of\nthose little troubles of children, of which older people make light;\nbut with a sudden gratitude also, as he reflected how richly possessed\nhis life had actually been by beautiful aspects and imageries, seeing\nhow greatly what was repugnant to the eye disturbed his peace.\n\nThus the boyhood of Marius passed; on the whole, more given to\ncontemplation than to action. Less prosperous in fortune than at an\nearlier day there had been reason to expect, and animating his\nsolitude, as he read eagerly and intelligently, with the traditions of\nthe past, already he lived much in the realm of the imagination, and\nbecame betimes, as he was to continue all through life, something of an\nidealist, constructing the world for himself in great measure from\nwithin, by the exercise of meditative power. A vein of subjective\nphilosophy, with the individual for its standard of all things, there\nwould be always in his intellectual scheme of the world and of conduct,\nwith a certain incapacity wholly to accept other men\u2019s valuations. And\nthe generation of this peculiar element in his temper he could trace up\nto the days when his life had been so like the reading of a romance to\nhim. Had the Romans a word for unworldly? The beautiful word umbratilis\nperhaps comes nearest to it; and, with that precise sense, might\ndescribe the spirit in which he prepared himself for the sacerdotal\nfunction hereditary in his family\u2014the sort of mystic enjoyment he had\nin the abstinence, the strenuous self-control and asc\u00easis, which such\npreparation involved. Like the young Ion in the beautiful opening of\nthe play of Euripides, who every morning sweeps the temple floor with\nsuch a fund of cheerfulness in his service, he was apt to be happy in\nsacred places, with a susceptibility to their peculiar influences which\nhe never outgrew; so that often in after-times, quite unexpectedly,\nthis feeling would revive in him with undiminished freshness. That\nfirst, early, boyish ideal of priesthood, the sense of dedication,\nsurvived through all the distractions of the world, and when all\nthought of such vocation had finally passed from him, as a ministry, in\nspirit at least, towards a sort of hieratic beauty and order in the\nconduct of life.\n\nAnd now what relieved in part this over-tension of soul was the lad\u2019s\npleasure in the country and the open air; above all, the ramble to the\ncoast, over the marsh with its dwarf roses and wild lavender, and\ndelightful signs, one after another\u2014the abandoned boat, the ruined\nflood-gates, the flock of wild birds\u2014that one was approaching the sea;\nthe long summer-day of idleness among its vague scents and sounds. And\nit was characteristic of him that he relished especially the grave,\nsubdued, northern notes in all that\u2014the charm of the French or English\nnotes, as we might term them\u2014in the luxuriant Italian landscape.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\nCHANGE OF AIR\n\n\nDilexi decorem domus tuae.\n\nThat almost morbid religious idealism, and his healthful love of the\ncountry, were both alike developed by the circumstances of a journey,\nwhich happened about this time, when Marius was taken to a certain\ntemple of Aesculapius, among the hills of Etruria, as was then usual in\nsuch cases, for the cure of some boyish sickness. The religion of\nAesculapius, though borrowed from Greece, had been naturalised in Rome\nin the old republican times; but had reached under the Antonines the\nheight of its popularity throughout the Roman world. That was an age of\nvaletudinarians, in many instances of imaginary ones; but below its\nvarious crazes concerning health and disease, largely multiplied a few\nyears after the time of which I am speaking by the miseries of a great\npestilence, lay a valuable, because partly practicable, belief that all\nthe maladies of the soul might be reached through the subtle gateways\nof the body.\n\nSalus, salvation, for the Romans, had come to mean bodily sanity. The\nreligion of the god of bodily health, Salvator, as they called him\nabsolutely, had a chance just then of becoming the one religion; that\nmild and philanthropic son of Apollo surviving, or absorbing, all other\npagan godhead. The apparatus of the medical art, the salutary mineral\nor herb, diet or abstinence, and all the varieties of the bath, came to\nhave a kind of sacramental character, so deep was the feeling, in more\nserious minds, of a moral or spiritual profit in physical health,\nbeyond the obvious bodily advantages one had of it; the body becoming\ntruly, in that case, but a quiet handmaid of the soul. The priesthood\nor \u201cfamily\u201d of Aesculapius, a vast college, believed to be in\npossession of certain precious medical secrets, came nearest perhaps,\nof all the institutions of the pagan world, to the Christian\npriesthood; the temples of the god, rich in some instances with the\naccumulated thank-offerings of centuries of a tasteful devotion, being\nreally also a kind of hospitals for the sick, administered in a full\nconviction of the religiousness, the refined and sacred happiness, of a\nlife spent in the relieving of pain.\n\nElements of a really experimental and progressive knowledge there were\ndoubtless amid this devout enthusiasm, bent so faithfully on the\nreception of health as a direct gift from God; but for the most part\nhis care was held to take effect through a machinery easily capable of\nmisuse for purposes of religious fraud. Through dreams, above all,\ninspired by Aesculapius himself, information as to the cause and cure\nof a malady was supposed to come to the sufferer, in a belief based on\nthe truth that dreams do sometimes, for those who watch them carefully,\ngive many hints concerning the conditions of the body\u2014those latent weak\npoints at which disease or death may most easily break into it. In the\ntime of Marcus Aurelius these medical dreams had become more than ever\na fashionable caprice. Aristeides, the \u201cOrator,\u201d a man of undoubted\nintellectual power, has devoted six discourses to their interpretation;\nthe really scientific Galen has recorded how beneficently they had\nintervened in his own case, at certain turning-points of life; and a\nbelief in them was one of the frailties of the wise emperor himself.\nPartly for the sake of these dreams, living ministers of the god, more\nlikely to come to one in his actual dwelling-place than elsewhere, it\nwas almost a necessity that the patient should sleep one or more nights\nwithin the precincts of a temple consecrated to his service, during\nwhich time he must observe certain rules prescribed by the priests.\n\nFor this purpose, after devoutly saluting the Lares, as was customary\nbefore starting on a journey, Marius set forth one summer morning on\nhis way to the famous temple which lay among the hills beyond the\nvalley of the Arnus. It was his greatest adventure hitherto; and he had\nmuch pleasure in all its details, in spite of his feverishness.\nStarting early, under the guidance of an old serving-man who drove the\nmules, with his wife who took all that was needful for their\nrefreshment on the way and for the offering at the shrine, they went,\nunder the genial heat, halting now and then to pluck certain flowers\nseen for the first time on these high places, upwards, through a long\nday of sunshine, while cliffs and woods sank gradually below their\npath. The evening came as they passed along a steep white road with\nmany windings among the pines, and it was night when they reached the\ntemple, the lights of which shone out upon them pausing before the\ngates of the sacred enclosure, while Marius became alive to a singular\npurity in the air. A rippling of water about the place was the only\nthing audible, as they waited till two priestly figures, speaking Greek\nto one another, admitted them into a large, white-walled and clearly\nlighted guest-chamber, in which, while he partook of a simple but\nwholesomely prepared supper, Marius still seemed to feel pleasantly the\nheight they had attained to among the hills.\n\nThe agreeable sense of all this was spoiled by one thing only, his old\nfear of serpents; for it was under the form of a serpent that\nAesculapius had come to Rome, and the last definite thought of his\nweary head before he fell asleep had been a dread either that the god\nmight appear, as he was said sometimes to do, under this hideous\naspect, or perhaps one of those great sallow-hued snakes themselves,\nkept in the sacred place, as he had also heard was usual.\n\nAnd after an hour\u2019s feverish dreaming he awoke\u2014with a cry, it would\nseem, for some one had entered the room bearing a light. The footsteps\nof the youthful figure which approached and sat by his bedside were\ncertainly real. Ever afterwards, when the thought arose in his mind of\nsome unhoped-for but entire relief from distress, like blue sky in a\nstorm at sea, would come back the memory of that gracious countenance\nwhich, amid all the kindness of its gaze, had yet a certain air of\npredominance over him, so that he seemed now for the first time to have\nfound the master of his spirit. It would have been sweet to be the\nservant of him who now sat beside him speaking.\n\nHe caught a lesson from what was then said, still somewhat beyond his\nyears, a lesson in the skilled cultivation of life, of experience, of\nopportunity, which seemed to be the aim of the young priest\u2019s\nrecommendations. The sum of them, through various forgotten intervals\nof argument, as might really have happened in a dream, was the precept,\nrepeated many times under slightly varied aspects, of a diligent\npromotion of the capacity of the eye, inasmuch as in the eye would lie\nfor him the determining influence of life: he was of the number of\nthose who, in the words of a poet who came long after, must be \u201cmade\nperfect by the love of visible beauty.\u201d The discourse was conceived\nfrom the point of view of a theory Marius found afterwards in Plato\u2019s\nPhaedrus, which supposes men\u2019s spirits susceptible to certain\ninfluences, diffused, after the manner of streams or currents, by fair\nthings or persons visibly present\u2014green fields, for instance, or\nchildren\u2019s faces\u2014into the air around them, acting, in the case of some\npeculiar natures, like potent material essences, and conforming the\nseer to themselves as with some cunning physical necessity. This\ntheory,* in itself so fantastic, had however determined in a range of\nmethodical suggestions, altogether quaint here and there from their\ncircumstantial minuteness. And throughout, the possibility of some\nvision, as of a new city coming down \u201clike a bride out of heaven,\u201d a\nvision still indeed, it might seem, a long way off, but to be granted\nperhaps one day to the eyes thus trained, was presented as the motive\nof this laboriously practical direction.\n\n* [Transliteration:] \u00ca aporro\u00ea tou kallous. +Translation: \u201cEmanation\nfrom a thing of beauty.\u201d\n\n\n\u201cIf thou wouldst have all about thee like the colours of some fresh\npicture, in a clear light,\u201d so the discourse recommenced after a pause,\n\u201cbe temperate in thy religious notions, in love, in wine, in all\nthings, and of a peaceful heart with thy fellows.\u201d To keep the eye\nclear by a sort of exquisite personal alacrity and cleanliness,\nextending even to his dwelling-place; to discriminate, ever more and\nmore fastidiously, select form and colour in things from what was less\nselect; to meditate much on beautiful visible objects, on objects, more\nespecially, connected with the period of youth\u2014on children at play in\nthe morning, the trees in early spring, on young animals, on the\nfashions and amusements of young men; to keep ever by him if it were\nbut a single choice flower, a graceful animal or sea-shell, as a token\nand representative of the whole kingdom of such things; to avoid\njealously, in his way through the world, everything repugnant to sight;\nand, should any circumstance tempt him to a general converse in the\nrange of such objects, to disentangle himself from that circumstance at\nany cost of place, money, or opportunity; such were in brief outline\nthe duties recognised, the rights demanded, in this new formula of\nlife. And it was delivered with conviction; as if the speaker verily\nsaw into the recesses of the mental and physical being of the listener,\nwhile his own expression of perfect temperance had in it a fascinating\npower\u2014the merely negative element of purity, the mere freedom from\ntaint or flaw, in exercise as a positive influence. Long afterwards,\nwhen Marius read the Charmides\u2014that other dialogue of Plato, into which\nhe seems to have expressed the very genius of old Greek temperance\u2014the\nimage of this speaker came back vividly before him, to take the chief\npart in the conversation.\n\nIt was as a weighty sanction of such temperance, in almost visible\nsymbolism (an outward imagery identifying itself with unseen\nmoralities) that the memory of that night\u2019s double experience, the\ndream of the great sallow snake and the utterance of the young priest,\nalways returned to him, and the contrast therein involved made him\nrevolt with unfaltering instinct from the bare thought of an excess in\nsleep, or diet, or even in matters of taste, still more from any excess\nof a coarser kind.\n\nWhen he awoke again, still in the exceeding freshness he had felt on\nhis arrival, and now in full sunlight, it was as if his sickness had\nreally departed with the terror of the night: a confusion had passed\nfrom the brain, a painful dryness from his hands. Simply to be alive\nand there was a delight; and as he bathed in the fresh water set ready\nfor his use, the air of the room about him seemed like pure gold, the\nvery shadows rich with colour. Summoned at length by one of the\nwhite-robed brethren, he went out to walk in the temple garden. At a\ndistance, on either side, his guide pointed out to him the Houses of\nBirth and Death, erected for the reception respectively of women about\nto become mothers, and of persons about to die; neither of those\nincidents being allowed to defile, as was thought, the actual precincts\nof the shrine. His visitor of the previous night he saw nowhere again.\nBut among the official ministers of the place there was one, already\nmarked as of great celebrity, whom Marius saw often in later days at\nRome, the physician Galen, now about thirty years old. He was standing,\nthe hood partly drawn over his face, beside the holy well, as Marius\nand his guide approached it.\n\nThis famous well or conduit, primary cause of the temple and its\nsurrounding institutions, was supplied by the water of a spring flowing\ndirectly out of the rocky foundations of the shrine. From the rim of\nits basin rose a circle of trim columns to support a cupola of singular\nlightness and grace, itself full of reflected light from the rippling\nsurface, through which might be traced the wavy figure-work of the\nmarble lining below as the stream of water rushed in. Legend told of a\nvisit of Aesculapius to this place, earlier and happier than his first\ncoming to Rome: an inscription around the cupola recorded it in letters\nof gold. \u201cBeing come unto this place the son of God loved it\nexceedingly:\u201d\u2014Huc profectus filius Dei maxime amavit hunc locum;\u2014and it\nwas then that that most intimately human of the gods had given men the\nwell, with all its salutary properties. The element itself when\nreceived into the mouth, in consequence of its entire freedom from\nadhering organic matter, was more like a draught of wonderfully pure\nair than water; and after tasting, Marius was told many mysterious\ncircumstances concerning it, by one and another of the bystanders:\u2014he\nwho drank often thereof might well think he had tasted of the Homeric\nlotus, so great became his desire to remain always on that spot:\ncarried to other places, it was almost indefinitely conservative of its\nfine qualities: nay! a few drops of it would amend other water; and it\nflowed not only with unvarying abundance but with a volume so oddly\nrhythmical that the well stood always full to the brim, whatever\nquantity might be drawn from it, seeming to answer with strange\nalacrity of service to human needs, like a true creature and pupil of\nthe philanthropic god. Certainly the little crowd around seemed to find\nsingular refreshment in gazing on it. The whole place appeared sensibly\ninfluenced by the amiable and healthful spirit of the thing. All the\nobjects of the country were there at their freshest. In the great\npark-like enclosure for the maintenance of the sacred animals offered\nby the convalescent, grass and trees were allowed to grow with a kind\nof graceful wildness; otherwise, all was wonderfully nice. And that\nfreshness seemed to have something moral in its influence, as if it\nacted upon the body and the merely bodily powers of apprehension,\nthrough the intelligence; and to the end of his visit Marius saw no\nmore serpents.\n\nA lad was just then drawing water for ritual uses, and Marius followed\nhim as he returned from the well, more and more impressed by the\nreligiousness of all he saw, on his way through a long cloister or\ncorridor, the walls well-nigh hidden under votive inscriptions\nrecording favours from the son of Apollo, and with a distant fragrance\nof incense in the air, explained when he turned aside through an open\ndoorway into the temple itself. His heart bounded as the refined and\ndainty magnificence of the place came upon him suddenly, in the flood\nof early sunshine, with the ceremonial lights burning here and there,\nand withal a singular expression of sacred order, a surprising\ncleanliness and simplicity. Certain priests, men whose countenances\nbore a deep impression of cultivated mind, each with his little group\nof assistants, were gliding round silently to perform their morning\nsalutation to the god, raising the closed thumb and finger of the right\nhand with a kiss in the air, as they came and went on their sacred\nbusiness, bearing their frankincense and lustral water. Around the\nwalls, at such a level that the worshippers might read, as in a book,\nthe story of the god and his sons, the brotherhood of the Asclepiadae,\nran a series of imageries, in low relief, their delicate light and\nshade being heightened, here and there, with gold. Fullest of inspired\nand sacred expression, as if in this place the chisel of the artist had\nindeed dealt not with marble but with the very breath of feeling and\nthought, was the scene in which the earliest generation of the sons of\nAesculapius were transformed into healing dreams; for \u201cgrown now too\nglorious to abide longer among men, by the aid of their sire they put\naway their mortal bodies, and came into another country, yet not indeed\ninto Elysium nor into the Islands of the Blest. But being made like to\nthe immortal gods, they began to pass about through the world, changed\nthus far from their first form that they appear eternally young, as\nmany persons have seen them in many places\u2014ministers and heralds of\ntheir father, passing to and fro over the earth, like gliding stars.\nWhich thing is, indeed, the most wonderful concerning them!\u201d And in\nthis scene, as throughout the series, with all its crowded personages,\nMarius noted on the carved faces the same peculiar union of unction,\nalmost of hilarity, with a certain self-possession and reserve, which\nwas conspicuous in the living ministrants around him.\n\nIn the central space, upon a pillar or pedestal, hung, ex voto, with\nthe richest personal ornaments, stood the image of Aesculapius himself,\nsurrounded by choice flowering plants. It presented the type, still\nwith something of the severity of the earlier art of Greece about it,\nnot of an aged and crafty physician, but of a youth, earnest and strong\nof aspect, carrying an ampulla or bottle in one hand, and in the other\na traveller\u2019s staff, a pilgrim among his pilgrim worshippers; and one\nof the ministers explained to Marius this pilgrim guise.\u2014One chief\nsource of the master\u2019s knowledge of healing had been observation of the\nremedies resorted to by animals labouring under disease or pain\u2014what\nleaf or berry the lizard or dormouse lay upon its wounded fellow; to\nwhich purpose for long years he had led the life of a wanderer, in wild\nplaces. The boy took his place as the last comer, a little way behind\nthe group of worshippers who stood in front of the image. There, with\nuplifted face, the palms of his two hands raised and open before him,\nand taught by the priest, he said his collect of thanksgiving and\nprayer (Aristeides has recorded it at the end of his Asclepiadae) to\nthe Inspired Dreams:\u2014\n\n\u201cO ye children of Apollo! who in time past have stilled the waves of\nsorrow for many people, lighting up a lamp of safety before those who\ntravel by sea and land, be pleased, in your great condescension, though\nye be equal in glory with your elder brethren the Dioscuri, and your\nlot in immortal youth be as theirs, to accept this prayer, which in\nsleep and vision ye have inspired. Order it aright, I pray you,\naccording to your loving-kindness to men. Preserve me from sickness;\nand endue my body with such a measure of health as may suffice it for\nthe obeying of the spirit, that I may pass my days unhindered and in\nquietness.\u201d\n\nOn the last morning of his visit Marius entered the shrine again, and\njust before his departure the priest, who had been his special director\nduring his stay at the place, lifting a cunningly contrived panel,\nwhich formed the back of one of the carved seats, bade him look\nthrough. What he saw was like the vision of a new world, by the opening\nof some unsuspected window in a familiar dwelling-place. He looked out\nupon a long-drawn valley of singularly cheerful aspect, hidden, by the\npeculiar conformation of the locality, from all points of observation\nbut this. In a green meadow at the foot of the steep olive-clad rocks\nbelow, the novices were taking their exercise. The softly sloping sides\nof the vale lay alike in full sunlight; and its distant opening was\nclosed by a beautifully formed mountain, from which the last wreaths of\nmorning mist were rising under the heat. It might have seemed the very\npresentment of a land of hope, its hollows brimful of a shadow of blue\nflowers; and lo! on the one level space of the horizon, in a long dark\nline, were towers and a dome: and that was Pisa.\u2014Or Rome, was it? asked\nMarius, ready to believe the utmost, in his excitement.\n\nAll this served, as he understood afterwards in retrospect, at once to\nstrengthen and to purify a certain vein of character in him. Developing\nthe ideal, pre-existent there, of a religious beauty, associated for\nthe future with the exquisite splendour of the temple of Aesculapius,\nas it dawned upon him on that morning of his first visit\u2014it developed\nthat ideal in connexion with a vivid sense of the value of mental and\nbodily sanity. And this recognition of the beauty, even for the\naesthetic sense, of mere bodily health, now acquired, operated\nafterwards as an influence morally salutary, counteracting the less\ndesirable or hazardous tendencies of some phases of thought, through\nwhich he was to pass.\n\nHe came home brown with health to find the health of his mother\nfailing; and about her death, which occurred not long afterwards, there\nwas a circumstance which rested with him as the cruellest touch of all,\nin an event which for a time seemed to have taken the light out of the\nsunshine. She died away from home, but sent for him at the last, with a\npainful effort on her part, but to his great gratitude, pondering, as\nhe always believed, that he might chance otherwise to look back all his\nlife long upon a single fault with something like remorse, and find the\nburden a great one. For it happened that, through some sudden,\nincomprehensible petulance there had been an angry childish gesture,\nand a slighting word, at the very moment of her departure, actually for\nthe last time. Remembering this he would ever afterwards pray to be\nsaved from offences against his own affections; the thought of that\nmarred parting having peculiar bitterness for one, who set so much\nstore, both by principle and habit, on the sentiment of home.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV.\nTHE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE\n\n\nO mare! O littus! verum secretumque Mouseion,+\nquam multa invenitis, quam multa dictatis!\nPliny\u2019s Letters.\n\n\nIt would hardly have been possible to feel more seriously than did\nMarius in those grave years of his early life. But the death of his\nmother turned seriousness of feeling into a matter of the intelligence:\nit made him a questioner; and, by bringing into full evidence to him\nthe force of his affections and the probable importance of their place\nin his future, developed in him generally the more human and earthly\nelements of character. A singularly virile consciousness of the\nrealities of life pronounced itself in him; still however as in the\nmain a poetic apprehension, though united already with something of\npersonal ambition and the instinct of self-assertion. There were days\nwhen he could suspect, though it was a suspicion he was careful at\nfirst to put from him, that that early, much cherished religion of the\nvilla might come to count with him as but one form of poetic beauty, or\nof the ideal, in things; as but one voice, in a world where there were\nmany voices it would be a moral weakness not to listen to. And yet this\nvoice, through its forcible pre-occupation of his childish conscience,\nstill seemed to make a claim of a quite exclusive character, defining\nitself as essentially one of but two possible leaders of his spirit,\nthe other proposing to him unlimited self-expansion in a world of\nvarious sunshine. The contrast was so pronounced as to make the easy,\nlight-hearted, unsuspecting exercise of himself, among the temptations\nof the new phase of life which had now begun, seem nothing less than a\nrival religion, a rival religious service. The temptations, the various\nsunshine, were those of the old town of Pisa, where Marius was now a\ntall schoolboy. Pisa was a place lying just far enough from home to\nmake his rare visits to it in childhood seem like adventures, such as\nhad never failed to supply new and refreshing impulses to the\nimagination. The partly decayed pensive town, which still had its\ncommerce by sea, and its fashion at the bathing-season, had lent, at\none time the vivid memory of its fair streets of marble, at another the\nsolemn outline of the dark hills of Luna on its background, at another\nthe living glances of its men and women, to the thickly gathering crowd\nof impressions, out of which his notion of the world was then forming.\nAnd while he learned that the object, the experience, as it will be\nknown to memory, is really from first to last the chief point for\nconsideration in the conduct of life, these things were feeding also\nthe idealism constitutional with him\u2014his innate and habitual longing\nfor a world altogether fairer than that he saw. The child could find\nhis way in thought along those streets of the old town, expecting duly\nthe shrines at their corners, and their recurrent intervals of\ngarden-courts, or side-views of distant sea. The great temple of the\nplace, as he could remember it, on turning back once for a last look\nfrom an angle of his homeward road, counting its tall gray columns\nbetween the blue of the bay and the blue fields of blossoming flax\nbeyond; the harbour and its lights; the foreign ships lying there; the\nsailors\u2019 chapel of Venus, and her gilded image, hung with votive gifts;\nthe seamen themselves, their women and children, who had a whole\npeculiar colour-world of their own\u2014the boy\u2019s superficial delight in the\nbroad light and shadow of all that was mingled with the sense of power,\nof unknown distance, of the danger of storm and possible death.\n\nTo this place, then, Marius came down now from White-nights, to live in\nthe house of his guardian or tutor, that he might attend the school of\na famous rhetorician, and learn, among other things, Greek. The school,\none of many imitations of Plato\u2019s Academy in the old Athenian garden,\nlay in a quiet suburb of Pisa, and had its grove of cypresses, its\nporticoes, a house for the master, its chapel and images. For the\nmemory of Marius in after-days, a clear morning sunlight seemed to lie\nperpetually on that severe picture in old gray and green. The lad went\nto this school daily betimes, in state at first, with a young slave to\ncarry the books, and certainly with no reluctance, for the sight of his\nfellow-scholars, and their petulant activity, coming upon the sadder\nsentimental moods of his childhood, awoke at once that instinct of\nemulation which is but the other side of sympathy; and he was not\naware, of course, how completely the difference of his previous\ntraining had made him, even in his most enthusiastic participation in\nthe ways of that little world, still essentially but a spectator. While\nall their heart was in their limited boyish race, and its transitory\nprizes, he was already entertaining himself, very pleasurably\nmeditative, with the tiny drama in action before him, as but the mimic,\npreliminary exercise for a larger contest, and already with an implicit\nepicureanism. Watching all the gallant effects of their small\nrivalries\u2014a scene in the main of fresh delightful sunshine\u2014he entered\nat once into the sensations of a rivalry beyond them, into the passion\nof men, and had already recognised a certain appetite for fame, for\ndistinction among his fellows, as his dominant motive to be.\n\nThe fame he conceived for himself at this time was, as the reader will\nhave anticipated, of the intellectual order, that of a poet perhaps.\nAnd as, in that gray monastic tranquillity of the villa, inward voices\nfrom the reality of unseen things had come abundantly; so here, with\nthe sounds and aspects of the shore, and amid the urbanities, the\ngraceful follies, of a bathing-place, it was the reality, the tyrannous\nreality, of things visible that was borne in upon him. The real world\naround\u2014a present humanity not less comely, it might seem, than that of\nthe old heroic days\u2014endowing everything it touched upon, however\nremotely, down to its little passing tricks of fashion even, with a\nkind of fleeting beauty, exercised over him just then a great\nfascination.\n\nThat sense had come upon him in all its power one exceptionally fine\nsummer, the summer when, at a somewhat earlier age than was usual, he\nhad formally assumed the dress of manhood, going into the Forum for\nthat purpose, accompanied by his friends in festal array. At night,\nafter the full measure of those cloudless days, he would feel well-nigh\nwearied out, as if with a long succession of pictures and music. As he\nwandered through the gay streets or on the sea-shore, the real world\nseemed indeed boundless, and himself almost absolutely free in it, with\na boundless appetite for experience, for adventure, whether physical or\nof the spirit. His entire rearing hitherto had lent itself to an\nimaginative exaltation of the past; but now the spectacle actually\nafforded to his untired and freely open senses, suggested the\nreflection that the present had, it might be, really advanced beyond\nthe past, and he was ready to boast in the very fact that it was\nmodern. If, in a voluntary archaism, the polite world of that day went\nback to a choicer generation, as it fancied, for the purpose of a\nfastidious self-correction, in matters of art, of literature, and even,\nas we have seen, of religion, at least it improved, by a shade or two\nof more scrupulous finish, on the old pattern; and the new era, like\nthe Neu-zeit of the German enthusiasts at the beginning of our own\ncentury, might perhaps be discerned, awaiting one just a single step\nonward\u2014the perfected new manner, in the consummation of time, alike as\nregards the things of the imagination and the actual conduct of life.\nOnly, while the pursuit of an ideal like this demanded entire liberty\nof heart and brain, that old, staid, conservative religion of his\nchildhood certainly had its being in a world of somewhat narrow\nrestrictions. But then, the one was absolutely real, with nothing less\nthan the reality of seeing and hearing\u2014the other, how vague, shadowy,\nproblematical! Could its so limited probabilities be worth taking into\naccount in any practical question as to the rejecting or receiving of\nwhat was indeed so real, and, on the face of it, so desirable?\n\nAnd, dating from the time of his first coming to school, a great\nfriendship had grown up for him, in that life of so few attachments\u2014the\npure and disinterested friendship of schoolmates. He had seen Flavian\nfor the first time the day on which he had come to Pisa, at the moment\nwhen his mind was full of wistful thoughts regarding the new life to\nbegin for him to-morrow, and he gazed curiously at the crowd of\nbustling scholars as they came from their classes. There was something\nin Flavian a shade disdainful, as he stood isolated from the others for\na moment, explained in part by his stature and the distinction of the\nlow, broad forehead; though there was pleasantness also for the\nnewcomer in the roving blue eyes which seemed somehow to take a fuller\nhold upon things around than is usual with boys. Marius knew that those\nproud glances made kindly note of him for a moment, and felt something\nlike friendship at first sight. There was a tone of reserve or gravity\nthere, amid perfectly disciplined health, which, to his fancy, seemed\nto carry forward the expression of the austere sky and the clear song\nof the blackbird on that gray March evening. Flavian indeed was a\ncreature who changed much with the changes of the passing light and\nshade about him, and was brilliant enough under the early sunshine in\nschool next morning. Of all that little world of more or less gifted\nyouth, surely the centre was this lad of servile birth. Prince of the\nschool, he had gained an easy dominion over the old Greek master by the\nfascination of his parts, and over his fellow-scholars by the figure he\nbore. He wore already the manly dress; and standing there in class, as\nhe displayed his wonderful quickness in reckoning, or his taste in\ndeclaiming Homer, he was like a carved figure in motion, thought\nMarius, but with that indescribable gleam upon it which the words of\nHomer actually suggested, as perceptible on the visible forms of the\ngods\u2014hoia theous epen\u00eanothen aien eontas.+\n\nA story hung by him, a story which his comrades acutely connected with\nhis habitual air of somewhat peevish pride. Two points were held to be\nclear amid its general vagueness\u2014a rich stranger paid his schooling,\nand he was himself very poor, though there was an attractive piquancy\nin the poverty of Flavian which in a scholar of another figure might\nhave been despised. Over Marius too his dominion was entire. Three\nyears older than he, Flavian was appointed to help the younger boy in\nhis studies, and Marius thus became virtually his servant in many\nthings, taking his humours with a sort of grateful pride in being\nnoticed at all, and, thinking over all this afterwards, found that the\nfascination experienced by him had been a sentimental one, dependent on\nthe concession to himself of an intimacy, a certain tolerance of his\ncompany, granted to none beside.\n\nThat was in the earliest days; and then, as their intimacy grew, the\ngenius, the intellectual power of Flavian began its sway over him. The\nbrilliant youth who loved dress, and dainty food, and flowers, and\nseemed to have a natural alliance with, and claim upon, everything else\nwhich was physically select and bright, cultivated also that foppery of\nwords, of choice diction which was common among the \u00e9lite spirits of\nthat day; and Marius, early an expert and elegant penman, transcribed\nhis verses (the euphuism of which, amid a genuine original power, was\nthen so delightful to him) in beautiful ink, receiving in return the\nprofit of Flavian\u2019s really great intellectual capacities, developed and\naccomplished under the ambitious desire to make his way effectively in\nlife. Among other things he introduced him to the writings of a\nsprightly wit, then very busy with the pen, one Lucian\u2014writings seeming\nto overflow with that intellectual light turned upon dim places, which,\nat least in seasons of mental fair weather, can make people laugh where\nthey have been wont, perhaps, to pray. And, surely, the sunlight which\nfilled those well-remembered early mornings in school, had had more\nthan the usual measure of gold in it! Marius, at least, would lie awake\nbefore the time, thinking with delight of the long coming hours of hard\nwork in the presence of Flavian, as other boys dream of a holiday.\n\nIt was almost by accident at last, so wayward and capricious was he,\nthat reserve gave way, and Flavian told the story of his father\u2014a\nfreedman, presented late in life, and almost against his will, with the\nliberty so fondly desired in youth, but on condition of the sacrifice\nof part of his peculium\u2014the slave\u2019s diminutive hoard\u2014amassed by many a\nself-denial, in an existence necessarily hard. The rich man, interested\nin the promise of the fair child born on his estate, had sent him to\nschool. The meanness and dejection, nevertheless, of that unoccupied\nold age defined the leading memory of Flavian, revived sometimes, after\nthis first confidence, with a burst of angry tears amid the sunshine.\nBut nature had had her economy in nursing the strength of that one\nnatural affection; for, save his half-selfish care for Marius, it was\nthe single, really generous part, the one piety, in the lad\u2019s\ncharacter. In him Marius saw the spirit of unbelief, achieved as if at\none step. The much-admired freedman\u2019s son, as with the privilege of a\nnatural aristocracy, believed only in himself, in the brilliant, and\nmainly sensuous gifts, he had, or meant to acquire.\n\nAnd then, he had certainly yielded himself, though still with untouched\nhealth, in a world where manhood comes early, to the seductions of that\nluxurious town, and Marius wondered sometimes, in the freer revelation\nof himself by conversation, at the extent of his early corruption. How\noften, afterwards, did evil things present themselves in malign\nassociation with the memory of that beautiful head, and with a kind of\nborrowed sanction and charm in its natural grace! To Marius, at a later\ntime, he counted for as it were an epitome of the whole pagan world,\nthe depth of its corruption, and its perfection of form. And still, in\nhis mobility, his animation, in his eager capacity for various life, he\nwas so real an object, after that visionary idealism of the villa. His\nvoice, his glance, were like the breaking in of the solid world upon\none, amid the flimsy fictions of a dream. A shadow, handling all things\nas shadows, had felt a sudden real and poignant heat in them.\n\nMeantime, under his guidance, Marius was learning quickly and\nabundantly, because with a good will. There was that in the actual\neffectiveness of his figure which stimulated the younger lad to make\nthe most of opportunity; and he had experience already that education\nlargely increased one\u2019s capacity for enjoyment. He was acquiring what\nit is the chief function of all higher education to impart, the art,\nnamely, of so relieving the ideal or poetic traits, the elements of\ndistinction, in our everyday life\u2014of so exclusively living in them\u2014that\nthe unadorned remainder of it, the mere drift or d\u00e9bris of our days,\ncomes to be as though it were not. And the consciousness of this aim\ncame with the reading of one particular book, then fresh in the world,\nwith which he fell in about this time\u2014a book which awakened the poetic\nor romantic capacity as perhaps some other book might have done, but\nwas peculiar in giving it a direction emphatically sensuous. It made\nhim, in that visionary reception of every-day life, the seer, more\nespecially, of a revelation in colour and form. If our modern\neducation, in its better efforts, really conveys to any of us that kind\nof idealising power, it does so (though dealing mainly, as its\nprofessed instruments, with the most select and ideal remains of\nancient literature) oftenest by truant reading; and thus it happened\nalso, long ago, with Marius and his friend.\n\nNOTES\n\n\n43. +Transliteration: Mouseion. The word means \u201cseat of the muses.\u201d\nTranslation: \u201cO sea! O shore! my own Helicon, / How many things have\nyou uncovered to me, how many things suggested!\u201d Pliny, Letters, Book\nI, ix, to Minicius Fundanus.\n\n\n50. +Transliteration: hoia theous epen\u00eanothen aien eontas. Translation:\n\u201csuch as the gods are endowed with.\u201d Homer, Odyssey, 8.365.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V.\nTHE GOLDEN BOOK\n\n\nThe two lads were lounging together over a book, half-buried in a heap\nof dry corn, in an old granary\u2014the quiet corner to which they had\nclimbed out of the way of their noisier companions on one of their\nblandest holiday afternoons. They looked round: the western sun smote\nthrough the broad chinks of the shutters. How like a picture! and it\nwas precisely the scene described in what they were reading, with just\nthat added poetic touch in the book which made it delightful and\nselect, and, in the actual place, the ray of sunlight transforming the\nrough grain among the cool brown shadows into heaps of gold. What they\nwere intent on was, indeed, the book of books, the \u201cgolden\u201d book of\nthat day, a gift to Flavian, as was shown by the purple writing on the\nhandsome yellow wrapper, following the title Flaviane!\u2014it said,\n\nFlaviane! lege Felicitur!\nFlaviane! Vivas! Fioreas!\nFlaviane! Vivas! Gaudeas!\n\n\nIt was perfumed with oil of sandal-wood, and decorated with carved and\ngilt ivory bosses at the ends of the roller.\n\nAnd the inside was something not less dainty and fine, full of the\narchaisms and curious felicities in which that generation delighted,\nquaint terms and images picked fresh from the early dramatists, the\nlifelike phrases of some lost poet preserved by an old grammarian, racy\nmorsels of the vernacular and studied prettinesses:\u2014all alike, mere\nplaythings for the genuine power and natural eloquence of the erudite\nartist, unsuppressed by his erudition, which, however, made some people\nangry, chiefly less well \u201cgot-up\u201d people, and especially those who were\nuntidy from indolence.\n\nNo! it was certainly not that old-fashioned, unconscious ease of the\nearly literature, which could never come again; which, after all, had\nhad more in common with the \u201cinfinite patience\u201d of Apuleius than with\nthe hack-work readiness of his detractors, who might so well have been\n\u201cself-conscious\u201d of going slip-shod. And at least his success was\nunmistakable as to the precise literary effect he had intended,\nincluding a certain tincture of \u201cneology\u201d in expression\u2014nonnihil\ninterdum elocutione novella parum signatum\u2014in the language of Cornelius\nFronto, the contemporary prince of rhetoricians. What words he had\nfound for conveying, with a single touch, the sense of textures,\ncolours, incidents! \u201cLike jewellers\u2019 work! Like a myrrhine\nvase!\u201d\u2014admirers said of his writing. \u201cThe golden fibre in the hair, the\ngold thread-work in the gown marked her as the mistress\u201d\u2014aurum in comis\net in tunicis, ibi inflexum hic intextum, matronam profecto\nconfitebatur\u2014he writes, with his \u201ccurious felicity,\u201d of one of his\nheroines. Aurum intextum: gold fibre:\u2014well! there was something of that\nkind in his own work. And then, in an age when people, from the emperor\nAurelius downwards, prided themselves unwisely on writing in Greek, he\nhad written for Latin people in their own tongue; though still, in\ntruth, with all the care of a learned language. Not less happily\ninventive were the incidents recorded\u2014story within story\u2014stories with\nthe sudden, unlooked-for changes of dreams. He had his humorous touches\nalso. And what went to the ordinary boyish taste, in those somewhat\npeculiar readers, what would have charmed boys more purely boyish, was\nthe adventure:\u2014the bear loose in the house at night, the wolves\nstorming the farms in winter, the exploits of the robbers, their\ncharming caves, the delightful thrill one had at the question\u2014\u201cDon\u2019t\nyou know that these roads are infested by robbers?\u201d\n\nThe scene of the romance was laid in Thessaly, the original land of\nwitchcraft, and took one up and down its mountains, and into its old\nweird towns, haunts of magic and incantation, where all the more\ngenuine appliances of the black art, left behind her by Medea when she\nfled through that country, were still in use. In the city of Hypata,\nindeed, nothing seemed to be its true self\u2014\u201cYou might think that\nthrough the murmuring of some cadaverous spell, all things had been\nchanged into forms not their own; that there was humanity in the\nhardness of the stones you stumbled on; that the birds you heard\nsinging were feathered men; that the trees around the walls drew their\nleaves from a like source. The statues seemed about to move, the walls\nto speak, the dumb cattle to break out in prophecy; nay! the very sky\nand the sunbeams, as if they might suddenly cry out.\u201d Witches are there\nwho can draw down the moon, or at least the lunar virus\u2014that white\nfluid she sheds, to be found, so rarely, \u201con high, heathy places: which\nis a poison. A touch of it will drive men mad.\u201d\n\nAnd in one very remote village lives the sorceress Pamphile, who turns\nher neighbours into various animals. What true humour in the scene\nwhere, after mounting the rickety stairs, Lucius, peeping curiously\nthrough a chink in the door, is a spectator of the transformation of\nthe old witch herself into a bird, that she may take flight to the\nobject of her affections\u2014into an owl! \u201cFirst she stripped off every rag\nshe had. Then opening a certain chest she took from it many small\nboxes, and removing the lid of one of them, rubbed herself over for a\nlong time, from head to foot, with an ointment it contained, and after\nmuch low muttering to her lamp, began to jerk at last and shake her\nlimbs. And as her limbs moved to and fro, out burst the soft feathers:\nstout wings came forth to view: the nose grew hard and hooked: her\nnails were crooked into claws; and Pamphile was an owl. She uttered a\nqueasy screech; and, leaping little by little from the ground, making\ntrial of herself, fled presently, on full wing, out of doors.\u201d\n\nBy clumsy imitation of this process, Lucius, the hero of the romance,\ntransforms himself, not as he had intended into a showy winged\ncreature, but into the animal which has given name to the book; for\nthroughout it there runs a vein of racy, homely satire on the love of\nmagic then prevalent, curiosity concerning which had led Lucius to\nmeddle with the old woman\u2019s appliances. \u201cBe you my Venus,\u201d he says to\nthe pretty maid-servant who has introduced him to the view of Pamphile,\n\u201cand let me stand by you a winged Cupid!\u201d and, freely applying the\nmagic ointment, sees himself transformed, \u201cnot into a bird, but into an\nass!\u201d\n\nWell! the proper remedy for his distress is a supper of roses, could\nsuch be found, and many are his quaintly picturesque attempts to come\nby them at that adverse season; as he contrives to do at last, when,\nthe grotesque procession of Isis passing by with a bear and other\nstrange animals in its train, the ass following along with the rest\nsuddenly crunches the chaplet of roses carried in the High-priest\u2019s\nhand.\n\nMeantime, however, he must wait for the spring, with more than the\noutside of an ass; \u201cthough I was not so much a fool, nor so truly an\nass,\u201d he tells us, when he happens to be left alone with a daintily\nspread table, \u201cas to neglect this most delicious fare, and feed upon\ncoarse hay.\u201d For, in truth, all through the book, there is an\nunmistakably real feeling for asses, with bold touches like Swift\u2019s,\nand a genuine animal breadth. Lucius was the original ass, who peeping\nslily from the window of his hiding-place forgot all about the big\nshade he cast just above him, and gave occasion to the joke or proverb\nabout \u201cthe peeping ass and his shadow.\u201d\n\nBut the marvellous, delight in which is one of the really serious\nelements in most boys, passed at times, those young readers still\nfeeling its fascination, into what French writers call the macabre\u2014that\nspecies of almost insane pre-occupation with the materialities of our\nmouldering flesh, that luxury of disgust in gazing on corruption, which\nwas connected, in this writer at least, with not a little obvious\ncoarseness. It was a strange notion of the gross lust of the actual\nworld, that Marius took from some of these episodes. \u201cI am told,\u201d they\nread, \u201cthat when foreigners are interred, the old witches are in the\nhabit of out-racing the funeral procession, to ravage the corpse\u201d\u2014in\norder to obtain certain cuttings and remnants from it, with which to\ninjure the living\u2014\u201cespecially if the witch has happened to cast her eye\nupon some goodly young man.\u201d And the scene of the night-watching of a\ndead body lest the witches should come to tear off the flesh with their\nteeth, is worthy of Th\u00e9ophile Gautier.\n\nBut set as one of the episodes in the main narrative, a true gem amid\nits mockeries, its coarse though genuine humanity, its burlesque\nhorrors, came the tale of Cupid and Psyche, full of brilliant,\nlife-like situations, speciosa locis, and abounding in lovely visible\nimagery (one seemed to see and handle the golden hair, the fresh\nflowers, the precious works of art in it!) yet full also of a gentle\nidealism, so that you might take it, if you chose, for an allegory.\nWith a concentration of all his finer literary gifts, Apuleius had\ngathered into it the floating star-matter of many a delightful old\nstory.\u2014\n\nThe Story of Cupid and Psyche.\n\n\nIn a certain city lived a king and queen who had three daughters\nexceeding fair. But the beauty of the elder sisters, though pleasant to\nbehold, yet passed not the measure of human praise, while such was the\nloveliness of the youngest that men\u2019s speech was too poor to commend it\nworthily and could express it not at all. Many of the citizens and of\nstrangers, whom the fame of this excellent vision had gathered thither,\nconfounded by that matchless beauty, could but kiss the finger-tips of\ntheir right hands at sight of her, as in adoration to the goddess Venus\nherself. And soon a rumour passed through the country that she whom the\nblue deep had borne, forbearing her divine dignity, was even then\nmoving among men, or that by some fresh germination from the stars, not\nthe sea now, but the earth, had put forth a new Venus, endued with the\nflower of virginity.\n\nThis belief, with the fame of the maiden\u2019s loveliness, went daily\nfurther into distant lands, so that many people were drawn together to\nbehold that glorious model of the age. Men sailed no longer to Paphos,\nto Cnidus or Cythera, to the presence of the goddess Venus: her sacred\nrites were neglected, her images stood uncrowned, the cold ashes were\nleft to disfigure her forsaken altars. It was to a maiden that men\u2019s\nprayers were offered, to a human countenance they looked, in\npropitiating so great a godhead: when the girl went forth in the\nmorning they strewed flowers on her way, and the victims proper to that\nunseen goddess were presented as she passed along. This conveyance of\ndivine worship to a mortal kindled meantime the anger of the true\nVenus. \u201cLo! now, the ancient parent of nature,\u201d she cried, \u201cthe\nfountain of all elements! Behold me, Venus, benign mother of the world,\nsharing my honours with a mortal maiden, while my name, built up in\nheaven, is profaned by the mean things of earth! Shall a perishable\nwoman bear my image about with her? In vain did the shepherd of Ida\nprefer me! Yet shall she have little joy, whosoever she be, of her\nusurped and unlawful loveliness!\u201d Thereupon she called to her that\nwinged, bold boy, of evil ways, who wanders armed by night through\nmen\u2019s houses, spoiling their marriages; and stirring yet more by her\nspeech his inborn wantonness, she led him to the city, and showed him\nPsyche as she walked.\n\n\u201cI pray thee,\u201d she said, \u201cgive thy mother a full revenge. Let this maid\nbecome the slave of an unworthy love.\u201d Then, embracing him closely, she\ndeparted to the shore and took her throne upon the crest of the wave.\nAnd lo! at her unuttered will, her ocean-servants are in waiting: the\ndaughters of Nereus are there singing their song, and Portunus, and\nSalacia, and the tiny charioteer of the dolphin, with a host of Tritons\nleaping through the billows. And one blows softly through his sounding\nsea-shell, another spreads a silken web against the sun, a third\npresents the mirror to the eyes of his mistress, while the others swim\nside by side below, drawing her chariot. Such was the escort of Venus\nas she went upon the sea.\n\nPsyche meantime, aware of her loveliness, had no fruit thereof. All\npeople regarded and admired, but none sought her in marriage. It was\nbut as on the finished work of the craftsman that they gazed upon that\ndivine likeness. Her sisters, less fair than she, were happily wedded.\nShe, even as a widow, sitting at home, wept over her desolation, hating\nin her heart the beauty in which all men were pleased.\n\nAnd the king, supposing the gods were angry, inquired of the oracle of\nApollo, and Apollo answered him thus: \u201cLet the damsel be placed on the\ntop of a certain mountain, adorned as for the bed of marriage and of\ndeath. Look not for a son-in-law of mortal birth; but for that evil\nserpent-thing, by reason of whom even the gods tremble and the shadows\nof Styx are afraid.\u201d\n\nSo the king returned home and made known the oracle to his wife. For\nmany days she lamented, but at last the fulfilment of the divine\nprecept is urgent upon her, and the company make ready to conduct the\nmaiden to her deadly bridal. And now the nuptial torch gathers dark\nsmoke and ashes: the pleasant sound of the pipe is changed into a cry:\nthe marriage hymn concludes in a sorrowful wailing: below her yellow\nwedding-veil the bride shook away her tears; insomuch that the whole\ncity was afflicted together at the ill-luck of the stricken house.\n\nBut the mandate of the god impelled the hapless Psyche to her fate,\nand, these solemnities being ended, the funeral of the living soul goes\nforth, all the people following. Psyche, bitterly weeping, assists not\nat her marriage but at her own obsequies, and while the parents\nhesitate to accomplish a thing so unholy the daughter cries to them:\n\u201cWherefore torment your luckless age by long weeping? This was the\nprize of my extraordinary beauty! When all people celebrated us with\ndivine honours, and in one voice named the New Venus, it was then ye\nshould have wept for me as one dead. Now at last I understand that that\none name of Venus has been my ruin. Lead me and set me upon the\nappointed place. I am in haste to submit to that well-omened marriage,\nto behold that goodly spouse. Why delay the coming of him who was born\nfor the destruction of the whole world?\u201d\n\nShe was silent, and with firm step went on the way. And they proceeded\nto the appointed place on a steep mountain, and left there the maiden\nalone, and took their way homewards dejectedly. The wretched parents,\nin their close-shut house, yielded themselves to perpetual night; while\nto Psyche, fearful and trembling and weeping sore upon the\nmountain-top, comes the gentle Zephyrus. He lifts her mildly, and, with\nvesture afloat on either side, bears her by his own soft breathing over\nthe windings of the hills, and sets her lightly among the flowers in\nthe bosom of a valley below.\n\nPsyche, in those delicate grassy places, lying sweetly on her dewy bed,\nrested from the agitation of her soul and arose in peace. And lo! a\ngrove of mighty trees, with a fount of water, clear as glass, in the\nmidst; and hard by the water, a dwelling-place, built not by human\nhands but by some divine cunning. One recognised, even at the entering,\nthe delightful hostelry of a god. Golden pillars sustained the roof,\narched most curiously in cedar-wood and ivory. The walls were hidden\nunder wrought silver:\u2014all tame and woodland creatures leaping forward\nto the visitor\u2019s gaze. Wonderful indeed was the craftsman, divine or\nhalf-divine, who by the subtlety of his art had breathed so wild a soul\ninto the silver! The very pavement was distinct with pictures in goodly\nstones. In the glow of its precious metal the house is its own\ndaylight, having no need of the sun. Well might it seem a place\nfashioned for the conversation of gods with men!\n\nPsyche, drawn forward by the delight of it, came near, and, her courage\ngrowing, stood within the doorway. One by one, she admired the\nbeautiful things she saw; and, most wonderful of all! no lock, no\nchain, nor living guardian protected that great treasure house. But as\nshe gazed there came a voice\u2014a voice, as it were unclothed of bodily\nvesture\u2014\u201cMistress!\u201d it said, \u201call these things are thine. Lie down, and\nrelieve thy weariness, and rise again for the bath when thou wilt. We\nthy servants, whose voice thou hearest, will be beforehand with our\nservice, and a royal feast shall be ready.\u201d\n\nAnd Psyche understood that some divine care was providing, and,\nrefreshed with sleep and the Bath, sat down to the feast. Still she saw\nno one: only she heard words falling here and there, and had voices\nalone to serve her. And the feast being ended, one entered the chamber\nand sang to her unseen, while another struck the chords of a harp,\ninvisible with him who played on it. Afterwards the sound of a company\nsinging together came to her, but still so that none were present to\nsight; yet it appeared that a great multitude of singers was there.\n\nAnd the hour of evening inviting her, she climbed into the bed; and as\nthe night was far advanced, behold a sound of a certain clemency\napproaches her. Then, fearing for her maidenhood in so great solitude,\nshe trembled, and more than any evil she knew dreaded that she knew\nnot. And now the husband, that unknown husband, drew near, and ascended\nthe couch, and made her his wife; and lo! before the rise of dawn he\nhad departed hastily. And the attendant voices ministered to the needs\nof the newly married. And so it happened with her for a long season.\nAnd as nature has willed, this new thing, by continual use, became a\ndelight to her: the sound of the voice grew to be her solace in that\ncondition of loneliness and uncertainty.\n\nOne night the bridegroom spoke thus to his beloved, \u201cO Psyche, most\npleasant bride! Fortune is grown stern with us, and threatens thee with\nmortal peril. Thy sisters, troubled at the report of thy death and\nseeking some trace of thee, will come to the mountain\u2019s top. But if by\nchance their cries reach thee, answer not, neither look forth at all,\nlest thou bring sorrow upon me and destruction upon thyself.\u201d Then\nPsyche promised that she would do according to his will. But the\nbridegroom was fled away again with the night. And all that day she\nspent in tears, repeating that she was now dead indeed, shut up in that\ngolden prison, powerless to console her sisters sorrowing after her, or\nto see their faces; and so went to rest weeping.\n\nAnd after a while came the bridegroom again, and lay down beside her,\nand embracing her as she wept, complained, \u201cWas this thy promise, my\nPsyche? What have I to hope from thee? Even in the arms of thy husband\nthou ceasest not from pain. Do now as thou wilt. Indulge thine own\ndesire, though it seeks what will ruin thee. Yet wilt thou remember my\nwarning, repentant too late.\u201d Then, protesting that she is like to die,\nshe obtains from him that he suffer her to see her sisters, and present\nto them moreover what gifts she would of golden ornaments; but\ntherewith he ofttimes advised her never at any time, yielding to\npernicious counsel, to enquire concerning his bodily form, lest she\nfall, through unholy curiosity, from so great a height of fortune, nor\nfeel ever his embrace again. \u201cI would die a hundred times,\u201d she said,\ncheerful at last, \u201crather than be deprived of thy most sweet usage. I\nlove thee as my own soul, beyond comparison even with Love himself.\nOnly bid thy servant Zephyrus bring hither my sisters, as he brought\nme. My honeycomb! My husband! Thy Psyche\u2019s breath of life!\u201d So he\npromised; and after the embraces of the night, ere the light appeared,\nvanished from the hands of his bride.\n\nAnd the sisters, coming to the place where Psyche was abandoned, wept\nloudly among the rocks, and called upon her by name, so that the sound\ncame down to her, and running out of the palace distraught, she cried,\n\u201cWherefore afflict your souls with lamentation? I whom you mourn am\nhere.\u201d Then, summoning Zephyrus, she reminded him of her husband\u2019s\nbidding; and he bare them down with a gentle blast. \u201cEnter now,\u201d she\nsaid, \u201cinto my house, and relieve your sorrow in the company of Psyche\nyour sister.\u201d\n\nAnd Psyche displayed to them all the treasures of the golden house, and\nits great family of ministering voices, nursing in them the malice\nwhich was already at their hearts. And at last one of them asks\ncuriously who the lord of that celestial array may be, and what manner\nof man her husband? And Psyche answered dissemblingly, \u201cA young man,\nhandsome and mannerly, with a goodly beard. For the most part he hunts\nupon the mountains.\u201d And lest the secret should slip from her in the\nway of further speech, loading her sisters with gold and gems, she\ncommanded Zephyrus to bear them away.\n\nAnd they returned home, on fire with envy. \u201cSee now the injustice of\nfortune!\u201d cried one. \u201cWe, the elder children, are given like servants\nto be the wives of strangers, while the youngest is possessed of so\ngreat riches, who scarcely knows how to use them. You saw, Sister! what\na hoard of wealth lies in the house; what glittering gowns; what\nsplendour of precious gems, besides all that gold trodden under foot.\nIf she indeed hath, as she said, a bridegroom so goodly, then no one in\nall the world is happier. And it may be that this husband, being of\ndivine nature, will make her too a goddess. Nay! so in truth it is. It\nwas even thus she bore herself. Already she looks aloft and breathes\ndivinity, who, though but a woman, has voices for her handmaidens, and\ncan command the winds.\u201d \u201cThink,\u201d answered the other, \u201chow arrogantly\nshe dealt with us, grudging us these trifling gifts out of all that\nstore, and when our company became a burden, causing us to be hissed\nand driven away from her through the air! But I am no woman if she keep\nher hold on this great fortune; and if the insult done us has touched\nthee too, take we counsel together. Meanwhile let us hold our peace,\nand know naught of her, alive or dead. For they are not truly happy of\nwhose happiness other folk are unaware.\u201d\n\nAnd the bridegroom, whom still she knows not, warns her thus a second\ntime, as he talks with her by night: \u201cSeest thou what peril besets\nthee? Those cunning wolves have made ready for thee their snares, of\nwhich the sum is that they persuade thee to search into the fashion of\nmy countenance, the seeing of which, as I have told thee often, will be\nthe seeing of it no more for ever. But do thou neither listen nor make\nanswer to aught regarding thy husband. Besides, we have sown also the\nseed of our race. Even now this bosom grows with a child to be born to\nus, a child, if thou but keep our secret, of divine quality; if thou\nprofane it, subject to death.\u201d And Psyche was glad at the tidings,\nrejoicing in that solace of a divine seed, and in the glory of that\npledge of love to be, and the dignity of the name of mother. Anxiously\nshe notes the increase of the days, the waning months. And again, as he\ntarries briefly beside her, the bridegroom repeats his warning:\n\n\u201cEven now the sword is drawn with which thy sisters seek thy life. Have\npity on thyself, sweet wife, and upon our child, and see not those evil\nwomen again.\u201d But the sisters make their way into the palace once more,\ncrying to her in wily tones, \u201cO Psyche! and thou too wilt be a mother!\nHow great will be the joy at home! Happy indeed shall we be to have the\nnursing of the golden child. Truly if he be answerable to the beauty of\nhis parents, it will be a birth of Cupid himself.\u201d\n\nSo, little by little, they stole upon the heart of their sister. She,\nmeanwhile, bids the lyre to sound for their delight, and the playing is\nheard: she bids the pipes to move, the quire to sing, and the music and\nthe singing come invisibly, soothing the mind of the listener with\nsweetest modulation. Yet not even thereby was their malice put to\nsleep: once more they seek to know what manner of husband she has, and\nwhence that seed. And Psyche, simple over-much, forgetful of her first\nstory, answers, \u201cMy husband comes from a far country, trading for great\nsums. He is already of middle age, with whitening locks.\u201d And therewith\nshe dismisses them again.\n\nAnd returning home upon the soft breath of Zephyrus one cried to the\nother, \u201cWhat shall be said of so ugly a lie? He who was a young man\nwith goodly beard is now in middle life. It must be that she told a\nfalse tale: else is she in very truth ignorant what manner of man he\nis. Howsoever it be, let us destroy her quickly. For if she indeed\nknows not, be sure that her bridegroom is one of the gods: it is a god\nshe bears in her womb. And let that be far from us! If she be called\nmother of a god, then will life be more than I can bear.\u201d\n\nSo, full of rage against her, they returned to Psyche, and said to her\ncraftily, \u201cThou livest in an ignorant bliss, all incurious of thy real\ndanger. It is a deadly serpent, as we certainly know, that comes to\nsleep at thy side. Remember the words of the oracle, which declared\nthee destined to a cruel beast. There are those who have seen it at\nnightfall, coming back from its feeding. In no long time, they say, it\nwill end its blandishments. It but waits for the babe to be formed in\nthee, that it may devour thee by so much the richer. If indeed the\nsolitude of this musical place, or it may be the loathsome commerce of\na hidden love, delight thee, we at least in sisterly piety have done\nour part.\u201d And at last the unhappy Psyche, simple and frail of soul,\ncarried away by the terror of their words, losing memory of her\nhusband\u2019s precepts and her own promise, brought upon herself a great\ncalamity. Trembling and turning pale, she answers them, \u201cAnd they who\ntell those things, it may be, speak the truth. For in very deed never\nhave I seen the face of my husband, nor know I at all what manner of\nman he is. Always he frights me diligently from the sight of him,\nthreatening some great evil should I too curiously look upon his face.\nDo ye, if ye can help your sister in her great peril, stand by her\nnow.\u201d\n\nHer sisters answered her, \u201cThe way of safety we have well considered,\nand will teach thee. Take a sharp knife, and hide it in that part of\nthe couch where thou art wont to lie: take also a lamp filled with oil,\nand set it privily behind the curtain. And when he shall have drawn up\nhis coils into the accustomed place, and thou hearest him breathe in\nsleep, slip then from his side and discover the lamp, and, knife in\nhand, put forth thy strength, and strike off the serpent\u2019s head.\u201d And\nso they departed in haste.\n\nAnd Psyche left alone (alone but for the furies which beset her) is\ntossed up and down in her distress, like a wave of the sea; and though\nher will is firm, yet, in the moment of putting hand to the deed, she\nfalters, and is torn asunder by various apprehension of the great\ncalamity upon her. She hastens and anon delays, now full of distrust,\nand now of angry courage: under one bodily form she loathes the monster\nand loves the bridegroom. But twilight ushers in the night; and at\nlength in haste she makes ready for the terrible deed. Darkness came,\nand the bridegroom; and he first, after some faint essay of love, falls\ninto a deep sleep.\n\nAnd she, erewhile of no strength, the hard purpose of destiny assisting\nher, is confirmed in force. With lamp plucked forth, knife in hand, she\nput by her sex; and lo! as the secrets of the bed became manifest, the\nsweetest and most gentle of all creatures, Love himself, reclined\nthere, in his own proper loveliness! At sight of him the very flame of\nthe lamp kindled more gladly! But Psyche was afraid at the vision, and,\nfaint of soul, trembled back upon her knees, and would have hidden the\nsteel in her own bosom. But the knife slipped from her hand; and now,\nundone, yet ofttimes looking upon the beauty of that divine\ncountenance, she lives again. She sees the locks of that golden head,\npleasant with the unction of the gods, shed down in graceful\nentanglement behind and before, about the ruddy cheeks and white\nthroat. The pinions of the winged god, yet fresh with the dew, are\nspotless upon his shoulders, the delicate plumage wavering over them as\nthey lie at rest. Smooth he was, and, touched with light, worthy of\nVenus his mother. At the foot of the couch lay his bow and arrows, the\ninstruments of his power, propitious to men.\n\nAnd Psyche, gazing hungrily thereon, draws an arrow from the quiver,\nand trying the point upon her thumb, tremulous still, drave in the\nbarb, so that a drop of blood came forth. Thus fell she, by her own\nact, and unaware, into the love of Love. Falling upon the bridegroom,\nwith indrawn breath, in a hurry of kisses from eager and open lips, she\nshuddered as she thought how brief that sleep might be. And it chanced\nthat a drop of burning oil fell from the lamp upon the god\u2019s shoulder.\nAh! maladroit minister of love, thus to wound him from whom all fire\ncomes; though \u2019twas a lover, I trow, first devised thee, to have the\nfruit of his desire even in the darkness! At the touch of the fire the\ngod started up, and beholding the overthrow of her faith, quietly took\nflight from her embraces.\n\nAnd Psyche, as he rose upon the wing, laid hold on him with her two\nhands, hanging upon him in his passage through the air, till she sinks\nto the earth through weariness. And as she lay there, the divine lover,\ntarrying still, lighted upon a cypress tree which grew near, and, from\nthe top of it, spake thus to her, in great emotion. \u201cFoolish one!\nunmindful of the command of Venus, my mother, who had devoted thee to\none of base degree, I fled to thee in his stead. Now know I that this\nwas vainly done. Into mine own flesh pierced mine arrow, and I made\nthee my wife, only that I might seem a monster beside thee\u2014that thou\nshouldst seek to wound the head wherein lay the eyes so full of love to\nthee! Again and again, I thought to put thee on thy guard concerning\nthese things, and warned thee in loving-kindness. Now I would but\npunish thee by my flight hence.\u201d And therewith he winged his way into\nthe deep sky.\n\nPsyche, prostrate upon the earth, and following far as sight might\nreach the flight of the bridegroom, wept and lamented; and when the\nbreadth of space had parted him wholly from her, cast herself down from\nthe bank of a river which was nigh. But the stream, turning gentle in\nhonour of the god, put her forth again unhurt upon its margin. And as\nit happened, Pan, the rustic god, was sitting just then by the\nwaterside, embracing, in the body of a reed, the goddess Canna;\nteaching her to respond to him in all varieties of slender sound. Hard\nby, his flock of goats browsed at will. And the shaggy god called her,\nwounded and outworn, kindly to him and said, \u201cI am but a rustic\nherdsman, pretty maiden, yet wise, by favour of my great age and long\nexperience; and if I guess truly by those faltering steps, by thy\nsorrowful eyes and continual sighing, thou labourest with excess of\nlove. Listen then to me, and seek not death again, in the stream or\notherwise. Put aside thy woe, and turn thy prayers to Cupid. He is in\ntruth a delicate youth: win him by the delicacy of thy service.\u201d\n\nSo the shepherd-god spoke, and Psyche, answering nothing, but with a\nreverence to his serviceable deity, went on her way. And while she, in\nher search after Cupid, wandered through many lands, he was lying in\nthe chamber of his mother, heart-sick. And the white bird which floats\nover the waves plunged in haste into the sea, and approaching Venus, as\nshe bathed, made known to her that her son lies afflicted with some\ngrievous hurt, doubtful of life. And Venus cried, angrily, \u201cMy son,\nthen, has a mistress! And it is Psyche, who witched away my beauty and\nwas the rival of my godhead, whom he loves!\u201d\n\nTherewith she issued from the sea, and returning to her golden chamber,\nfound there the lad, sick, as she had heard, and cried from the\ndoorway, \u201cWell done, truly! to trample thy mother\u2019s precepts under\nfoot, to spare my enemy that cross of an unworthy love; nay, unite her\nto thyself, child as thou art, that I might have a daughter-in-law who\nhates me! I will make thee repent of thy sport, and the savour of thy\nmarriage bitter. There is one who shall chasten this body of thine, put\nout thy torch and unstring thy bow. Not till she has plucked forth that\nhair, into which so oft these hands have smoothed the golden light, and\nsheared away thy wings, shall I feel the injury done me avenged.\u201d And\nwith this she hastened in anger from the doors.\n\nAnd Ceres and Juno met her, and sought to know the meaning of her\ntroubled countenance. \u201cYe come in season,\u201d she cried; \u201cI pray you, find\nfor me Psyche. It must needs be that ye have heard the disgrace of my\nhouse.\u201d And they, ignorant of what was done, would have soothed her\nanger, saying, \u201cWhat fault, Mistress, hath thy son committed, that thou\nwouldst destroy the girl he loves? Knowest thou not that he is now of\nage? Because he wears his years so lightly must he seem to thee ever\nbut a child? Wilt thou for ever thus pry into the pastimes of thy son,\nalways accusing his wantonness, and blaming in him those delicate wiles\nwhich are all thine own?\u201d Thus, in secret fear of the boy\u2019s bow, did\nthey seek to please him with their gracious patronage. But Venus, angry\nat their light taking of her wrongs, turned her back upon them, and\nwith hasty steps made her way once more to the sea.\n\nMeanwhile Psyche, tost in soul, wandering hither and thither, rested\nnot night or day in the pursuit of her husband, desiring, if she might\nnot soothe his anger by the endearments of a wife, at the least to\npropitiate him with the prayers of a handmaid. And seeing a certain\ntemple on the top of a high mountain, she said, \u201cWho knows whether\nyonder place be not the abode of my lord?\u201d Thither, therefore, she\nturned her steps, hastening now the more because desire and hope\npressed her on, weary as she was with the labours of the way, and so,\npainfully measuring out the highest ridges of the mountain, drew near\nto the sacred couches. She sees ears of wheat, in heaps or twisted into\nchaplets; ears of barley also, with sickles and all the instruments of\nharvest, lying there in disorder, thrown at random from the hands of\nthe labourers in the great heat. These she curiously sets apart, one by\none, duly ordering them; for she said within herself, \u201cI may not\nneglect the shrines, nor the holy service, of any god there be, but\nmust rather win by supplication the kindly mercy of them all.\u201d\n\nAnd Ceres found her bending sadly upon her task, and cried aloud,\n\u201cAlas, Psyche! Venus, in the furiousness of her anger, tracks thy\nfootsteps through the world, seeking for thee to pay her the utmost\npenalty; and thou, thinking of anything rather than thine own safety,\nhast taken on thee the care of what belongs to me!\u201d Then Psyche fell\ndown at her feet, and sweeping the floor with her hair, washing the\nfootsteps of the goddess in her tears, besought her mercy, with many\nprayers:\u2014\u201cBy the gladdening rites of harvest, by the lighted lamps and\nmystic marches of the Marriage and mysterious Invention of thy daughter\nProserpine, and by all beside that the holy place of Attica veils in\nsilence, minister, I pray thee, to the sorrowful heart of Psyche!\nSuffer me to hide myself but for a few days among the heaps of corn,\ntill time have softened the anger of the goddess, and my strength,\nout-worn in my long travail, be recovered by a little rest.\u201d\n\nBut Ceres answered her, \u201cTruly thy tears move me, and I would fain help\nthee; only I dare not incur the ill-will of my kinswoman. Depart hence\nas quickly as may be.\u201d And Psyche, repelled against hope, afflicted now\nwith twofold sorrow, making her way back again, beheld among the\nhalf-lighted woods of the valley below a sanctuary builded with cunning\nart. And that she might lose no way of hope, howsoever doubtful, she\ndrew near to the sacred doors. She sees there gifts of price, and\ngarments fixed upon the door-posts and to the branches of the trees,\nwrought with letters of gold which told the name of the goddess to whom\nthey were dedicated, with thanksgiving for that she had done. So, with\nbent knee and hands laid about the glowing altar, she prayed saying,\n\u201cSister and spouse of Jupiter! be thou to these my desperate fortune\u2019s\nJuno the Auspicious! I know that thou dost willingly help those in\ntravail with child; deliver me from the peril that is upon me.\u201d And as\nshe prayed thus, Juno in the majesty of her godhead, was straightway\npresent, and answered, \u201cWould that I might incline favourably to thee;\nbut against the will of Venus, whom I have ever loved as a daughter, I\nmay not, for very shame, grant thy prayer.\u201d\n\nAnd Psyche, dismayed by this new shipwreck of her hope, communed thus\nwith herself, \u201cWhither, from the midst of the snares that beset me,\nshall I take my way once more? In what dark solitude shall I hide me\nfrom the all-seeing eye of Venus? What if I put on at length a man\u2019s\ncourage, and yielding myself unto her as my mistress, soften by a\nhumility not yet too late the fierceness of her purpose? Who knows but\nthat I may find him also whom my soul seeketh after, in the abode of\nhis mother?\u201d\n\nAnd Venus, renouncing all earthly aid in her search, prepared to return\nto heaven. She ordered the chariot to be made ready, wrought for her by\nVulcan as a marriage-gift, with a cunning of hand which had left his\nwork so much the richer by the weight of gold it lost under his tool.\nFrom the multitude which housed about the bed-chamber of their\nmistress, white doves came forth, and with joyful motions bent their\npainted necks beneath the yoke. Behind it, with playful riot, the\nsparrows sped onward, and other birds sweet of song, making known by\ntheir soft notes the approach of the goddess. Eagle and cruel hawk\nalarmed not the quireful family of Venus. And the clouds broke away, as\nthe uttermost ether opened to receive her, daughter and goddess, with\ngreat joy.\n\nAnd Venus passed straightway to the house of Jupiter to beg from him\nthe service of Mercury, the god of speech. And Jupiter refused not her\nprayer. And Venus and Mercury descended from heaven together; and as\nthey went, the former said to the latter, \u201cThou knowest, my brother of\nArcady, that never at any time have I done anything without thy help;\nfor how long time, moreover, I have sought a certain maiden in vain.\nAnd now naught remains but that, by thy heraldry, I proclaim a reward\nfor whomsoever shall find her. Do thou my bidding quickly.\u201d And\ntherewith she conveyed to him a little scrip, in the which was written\nthe name of Psyche, with other things; and so returned home.\n\nAnd Mercury failed not in his office; but departing into all lands,\nproclaimed that whosoever delivered up to Venus the fugitive girl,\nshould receive from herself seven kisses\u2014one thereof full of the inmost\nhoney of her throat. With that the doubt of Psyche was ended. And now,\nas she came near to the doors of Venus, one of the household, whose\nname was Use-and-Wont, ran out to her, crying, \u201cHast thou learned,\nWicked Maid! now at last! that thou hast a mistress?\u201d And seizing her\nroughly by the hair, drew her into the presence of Venus. And when\nVenus saw her, she cried out, saying, \u201cThou hast deigned then to make\nthy salutations to thy mother-in-law. Now will I in turn treat thee as\nbecometh a dutiful daughter-in-law!\u201d\n\nAnd she took barley and millet and poppy-seed, every kind of grain and\nseed, and mixed them together, and laughed, and said to her: \u201cMethinks\nso plain a maiden can earn lovers only by industrious ministry: now\nwill I also make trial of thy service. Sort me this heap of seed, the\none kind from the others, grain by grain; and get thy task done before\nthe evening.\u201d And Psyche, stunned by the cruelty of her bidding, was\nsilent, and moved not her hand to the inextricable heap. And there came\nforth a little ant, which had understanding of the difficulty of her\ntask, and took pity upon the consort of the god of Love; and he ran\ndeftly hither and thither, and called together the whole army of his\nfellows. \u201cHave pity,\u201d he cried, \u201cnimble scholars of the Earth, Mother\nof all things!\u2014have pity upon the wife of Love, and hasten to help her\nin her perilous effort.\u201d Then, one upon the other, the hosts of the\ninsect people hurried together; and they sorted asunder the whole heap\nof seed, separating every grain after its kind, and so departed quickly\nout of sight.\n\nAnd at nightfall Venus returned, and seeing that task finished with so\nwonderful diligence, she cried, \u201cThe work is not thine, thou naughty\nmaid, but his in whose eyes thou hast found favour.\u201d And calling her\nagain in the morning, \u201cSee now the grove,\u201d she said, \u201cbeyond yonder\ntorrent. Certain sheep feed there, whose fleeces shine with gold. Fetch\nme straightway a lock of that precious stuff, having gotten it as thou\nmayst.\u201d\n\nAnd Psyche went forth willingly, not to obey the command of Venus, but\neven to seek a rest from her labour in the depths of the river. But\nfrom the river, the green reed, lowly mother of music, spake to her: \u201cO\nPsyche! pollute not these waters by self-destruction, nor approach that\nterrible flock; for, as the heat groweth, they wax fierce. Lie down\nunder yon plane-tree, till the quiet of the river\u2019s breath have soothed\nthem. Thereafter thou mayst shake down the fleecy gold from the trees\nof the grove, for it holdeth by the leaves.\u201d\n\nAnd Psyche, instructed thus by the simple reed, in the humanity of its\nheart, filled her bosom with the soft golden stuff, and returned to\nVenus. But the goddess smiled bitterly, and said to her, \u201cWell know I\nwho was the author of this thing also. I will make further trial of thy\ndiscretion, and the boldness of thy heart. Seest thou the utmost peak\nof yonder steep mountain? The dark stream which flows down thence\nwaters the Stygian fields, and swells the flood of Cocytus. Bring me\nnow, in this little urn, a draught from its innermost source.\u201d And\ntherewith she put into her hands a vessel of wrought crystal.\n\nAnd Psyche set forth in haste on her way to the mountain, looking there\nat last to find the end of her hapless life. But when she came to the\nregion which borders on the cliff that was showed to her, she\nunderstood the deadly nature of her task. From a great rock, steep and\nslippery, a horrible river of water poured forth, falling straightway\nby a channel exceeding narrow into the unseen gulf below. And lo!\ncreeping from the rocks on either hand, angry serpents, with their long\nnecks and sleepless eyes. The very waters found a voice and bade her\ndepart, in smothered cries of, Depart hence! and What doest thou here?\nLook around thee! and Destruction is upon thee! And then sense left\nher, in the immensity of her peril, as one changed to stone.\n\nYet not even then did the distress of this innocent soul escape the\nsteady eye of a gentle providence. For the bird of Jupiter spread his\nwings and took flight to her, and asked her, \u201cDidst thou think, simple\none, even thou! that thou couldst steal one drop of that relentless\nstream, the holy river of Styx, terrible even to the gods? But give me\nthine urn.\u201d And the bird took the urn, and filled it at the source, and\nreturned to her quickly from among the teeth of the serpents, bringing\nwith him of the waters, all unwilling\u2014nay! warning him to depart away\nand not molest them.\n\nAnd she, receiving the urn with great joy, ran back quickly that she\nmight deliver it to Venus, and yet again satisfied not the angry\ngoddess. \u201cMy child!\u201d she said, \u201cin this one thing further must thou\nserve me. Take now this tiny casket, and get thee down even unto hell,\nand deliver it to Proserpine. Tell her that Venus would have of her\nbeauty so much at least as may suffice for but one day\u2019s use, that\nbeauty she possessed erewhile being foreworn and spoiled, through her\ntendance upon the sick-bed of her son; and be not slow in returning.\u201d\n\nAnd Psyche perceived there the last ebbing of her fortune\u2014that she was\nnow thrust openly upon death, who must go down, of her own motion, to\nHades and the Shades. And straightway she climbed to the top of an\nexceeding high tower, thinking within herself, \u201cI will cast myself down\nthence: so shall I descend most quickly into the kingdom of the dead.\u201d\nAnd the tower again, broke forth into speech: \u201cWretched Maid! Wretched\nMaid! Wilt thou destroy thyself? If the breath quit thy body, then wilt\nthou indeed go down into Hades, but by no means return hither. Listen\nto me. Among the pathless wilds not far from this place lies a certain\nmountain, and therein one of hell\u2019s vent-holes. Through the breach a\nrough way lies open, following which thou wilt come, by straight\ncourse, to the castle of Orcus. And thou must not go empty-handed. Take\nin each hand a morsel of barley-bread, soaked in hydromel; and in thy\nmouth two pieces of money. And when thou shalt be now well onward in\nthe way of death, then wilt thou overtake a lame ass laden with wood,\nand a lame driver, who will pray thee reach him certain cords to fasten\nthe burden which is falling from the ass: but be thou cautious to pass\non in silence. And soon as thou comest to the river of the dead,\nCharon, in that crazy bark he hath, will put thee over upon the further\nside. There is greed even among the dead: and thou shalt deliver to\nhim, for the ferrying, one of those two pieces of money, in such wise\nthat he take it with his hand from between thy lips. And as thou\npassest over the stream, a dead old man, rising on the water, will put\nup to thee his mouldering hands, and pray thee draw him into the\nferry-boat. But beware thou yield not to unlawful pity.\n\n\u201cWhen thou shalt be come over, and art upon the causeway, certain aged\nwomen, spinning, will cry to thee to lend thy hand to their work; and\nbeware again that thou take no part therein; for this also is the snare\nof Venus, whereby she would cause thee to cast away one at least of\nthose cakes thou bearest in thy hands. And think not that a slight\nmatter; for the loss of either one of them will be to thee the losing\nof the light of day. For a watch-dog exceeding fierce lies ever before\nthe threshold of that lonely house of Proserpine. Close his mouth with\none of thy cakes; so shalt thou pass by him, and enter straightway into\nthe presence of Proserpine herself. Then do thou deliver thy message,\nand taking what she shall give thee, return back again; offering to the\nwatch-dog the other cake, and to the ferryman that other piece of money\nthou hast in thy mouth. After this manner mayst thou return again\nbeneath the stars. But withal, I charge thee, think not to look into,\nnor open, the casket thou bearest, with that treasure of the beauty of\nthe divine countenance hidden therein.\u201d\n\nSo spake the stones of the tower; and Psyche delayed not, but\nproceeding diligently after the manner enjoined, entered into the house\nof Proserpine, at whose feet she sat down humbly, and would neither the\ndelicate couch nor that divine food the goddess offered her, but did\nstraightway the business of Venus. And Proserpine filled the casket\nsecretly and shut the lid, and delivered it to Psyche, who fled\ntherewith from Hades with new strength. But coming back into the light\nof day, even as she hasted now to the ending of her service, she was\nseized by a rash curiosity. \u201cLo! now,\u201d she said within herself, \u201cmy\nsimpleness! who bearing in my hands the divine loveliness, heed not to\ntouch myself with a particle at least therefrom, that I may please the\nmore, by the favour of it, my fair one, my beloved.\u201d Even as she spoke,\nshe lifted the lid; and behold! within, neither beauty, nor anything\nbeside, save sleep only, the sleep of the dead, which took hold upon\nher, filling all her members with its drowsy vapour, so that she lay\ndown in the way and moved not, as in the slumber of death.\n\nAnd Cupid being healed of his wound, because he would endure no longer\nthe absence of her he loved, gliding through the narrow window of the\nchamber wherein he was holden, his pinions being now repaired by a\nlittle rest, fled forth swiftly upon them, and coming to the place\nwhere Psyche was, shook that sleep away from her, and set him in his\nprison again, awaking her with the innocent point of his arrow. \u201cLo!\nthine old error again,\u201d he said, \u201cwhich had like once more to have\ndestroyed thee! But do thou now what is lacking of the command of my\nmother: the rest shall be my care.\u201d With these words, the lover rose\nupon the air; and being consumed inwardly with the greatness of his\nlove, penetrated with vehement wing into the highest place of heaven,\nto lay his cause before the father of the gods. And the father of gods\ntook his hand in his, and kissed his face and said to him, \u201cAt no time,\nmy son, hast thou regarded me with due honour. Often hast thou vexed my\nbosom, wherein lies the disposition of the stars, with those busy darts\nof thine. Nevertheless, because thou hast grown up between these mine\nhands, I will accomplish thy desire.\u201d And straightway he bade Mercury\ncall the gods together; and, the council-chamber being filled, sitting\nupon a high throne, \u201cYe gods,\u201d he said, \u201call ye whose names are in the\nwhite book of the Muses, ye know yonder lad. It seems good to me that\nhis youthful heats should by some means be restrained. And that all\noccasion may be taken from him, I would even confine him in the bonds\nof marriage. He has chosen and embraced a mortal maiden. Let him have\nfruit of his love, and possess her for ever.\u201d\n\nThereupon he bade Mercury produce Psyche in heaven; and holding out to\nher his ambrosial cup, \u201cTake it,\u201d he said, \u201cand live for ever; nor\nshall Cupid ever depart from thee.\u201d And the gods sat down together to\nthe marriage-feast.\n\nOn the first couch lay the bridegroom, and Psyche in his bosom. His\nrustic serving-boy bare the wine to Jupiter; and Bacchus to the rest.\nThe Seasons crimsoned all things with their roses. Apollo sang to the\nlyre, while a little Pan prattled on his reeds, and Venus danced very\nsweetly to the soft music. Thus, with due rites, did Psyche pass into\nthe power of Cupid; and from them was born the daughter whom men call\nVoluptas.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI.\nEUPHUISM\n\n\nSo the famous story composed itself in the memory of Marius, with an\nexpression changed in some ways from the original and on the whole\ngraver. The petulant, boyish Cupid of Apuleius was become more like\nthat \u201cLord, of terrible aspect,\u201d who stood at Dante\u2019s bedside and wept,\nor had at least grown to the manly earnestness of the Er\u00f4s of\nPraxiteles. Set in relief amid the coarser matter of the book, this\nepisode of Cupid and Psyche served to combine many lines of meditation,\nalready familiar to Marius, into the ideal of a perfect imaginative\nlove, centered upon a type of beauty entirely flawless and clean\u2014an\nideal which never wholly faded from his thoughts, though he valued it\nat various times in different degrees. The human body in its beauty, as\nthe highest potency of all the beauty of material objects, seemed to\nhim just then to be matter no longer, but, having taken celestial fire,\nto assert itself as indeed the true, though visible, soul or spirit in\nthings. In contrast with that ideal, in all the pure brilliancy, and as\nit were in the happy light, of youth and morning and the springtide,\nmen\u2019s actual loves, with which at many points the book brings one into\nclose contact, might appear to him, like the general tenor of their\nlives, to be somewhat mean and sordid. The hiddenness of perfect\nthings: a shrinking mysticism, a sentiment of diffidence like that\nexpressed in Psyche\u2019s so tremulous hope concerning the child to be born\nof the husband she had never yet seen\u2014\u201cin the face of this little\nchild, at the least, shall I apprehend thine\u201d\u2014in hoc saltem parvulo\ncognoscam faciem tuam: the fatality which seems to haunt any signal+\nbeauty, whether moral or physical, as if it were in itself something\nillicit and isolating: the suspicion and hatred it so often excites in\nthe vulgar:\u2014these were some of the impressions, forming, as they do, a\nconstant tradition of somewhat cynical pagan experience, from Medusa\nand Helen downwards, which the old story enforced on him. A book, like\na person, has its fortunes with one; is lucky or unlucky in the precise\nmoment of its falling in our way, and often by some happy accident\ncounts with us for something more than its independent value. The\nMetamorphoses of Apuleius, coming to Marius just then, figured for him\nas indeed The Golden Book: he felt a sort of personal gratitude to its\nwriter, and saw in it doubtless far more than was really there for any\nother reader. It occupied always a peculiar place in his remembrance,\nnever quite losing its power in frequent return to it for the revival\nof that first glowing impression.\n\nIts effect upon the elder youth was a more practical one: it stimulated\nthe literary ambition, already so strong a motive with him, by a signal\nexample of success, and made him more than ever an ardent,\nindefatigable student of words, of the means or instrument of the\nliterary art. The secrets of utterance, of expression itself, of that\nthrough which alone any intellectual or spiritual power within one can\nactually take effect upon others, to over-awe or charm them to one\u2019s\nside, presented themselves to this ambitious lad in immediate connexion\nwith that desire for predominance, for the satisfaction of which\nanother might have relied on the acquisition and display of brilliant\nmilitary qualities. In him, a fine instinctive sentiment of the exact\nvalue and power of words was connate with the eager longing for sway\nover his fellows. He saw himself already a gallant and effective\nleader, innovating or conservative as occasion might require, in the\nrehabilitation of the mother-tongue, then fallen so tarnished and\nlanguid; yet the sole object, as he mused within himself, of the only\nsort of patriotic feeling proper, or possible, for one born of slaves.\nThe popular speech was gradually departing from the form and rule of\nliterary language, a language always and increasingly artificial. While\nthe learned dialect was yearly becoming more and more barbarously\npedantic, the colloquial idiom, on the other hand, offered a thousand\nchance-tost gems of racy or picturesque expression, rejected or at\nleast ungathered by what claimed to be classical Latin. The time was\ncoming when neither the pedants nor the people would really understand\nCicero; though there were some indeed, like this new writer, Apuleius,\nwho, departing from the custom of writing in Greek, which had been a\nfashionable affectation among the sprightlier wits since the days of\nHadrian, had written in the vernacular.\n\nThe literary programme which Flavian had already designed for himself\nwould be a work, then, partly conservative or reactionary, in its\ndealing with the instrument of the literary art; partly popular and\nrevolutionary, asserting, so to term them, the rights of the\nproletariate of speech. More than fifty years before, the younger\nPliny, himself an effective witness for the delicate power of the Latin\ntongue, had said,\u2014\u201cI am one of those who admire the ancients, yet I do\nnot, like some others, underrate certain instances of genius which our\nown times afford. For it is not true that nature, as if weary and\neffete, no longer produces what is admirable.\u201d And he, Flavian, would\nprove himself the true master of the opportunity thus indicated. In his\neagerness for a not too distant fame, he dreamed over all that, as the\nyoung Caesar may have dreamed of campaigns. Others might brutalise or\nneglect the native speech, that true \u201copen field\u201d for charm and sway\nover men. He would make of it a serious study, weighing the precise\npower of every phrase and word, as though it were precious metal,\ndisentangling the later associations and going back to the original and\nnative sense of each,\u2014restoring to full significance all its wealth of\nlatent figurative expression, reviving or replacing its outworn or\ntarnished images. Latin literature and the Latin tongue were dying of\nroutine and languor; and what was necessary, first of all, was to\nre-establish the natural and direct relationship between thought and\nexpression, between the sensation and the term, and restore to words\ntheir primitive power.\n\nFor words, after all, words manipulated with all his delicate force,\nwere to be the apparatus of a war for himself. To be forcibly\nimpressed, in the first place; and in the next, to find the means of\nmaking visible to others that which was vividly apparent, delightful,\nof lively interest to himself, to the exclusion of all that was but\nmiddling, tame, or only half-true even to him\u2014this scrupulousness of\nliterary art actually awoke in Flavian, for the first time, a sort of\nchivalrous conscience. What care for style! what patience of execution!\nwhat research for the significant tones of ancient idiom\u2014sonantia verba\net antiqua! What stately and regular word-building\u2014gravis et decora\nconstructio! He felt the whole meaning of the sceptical Pliny\u2019s\nsomewhat melancholy advice to one of his friends, that he should seek\nin literature deliverance from mortality\u2014ut studiis se literarum a\nmortalitate vindicet. And there was everything in the nature and the\ntraining of Marius to make him a full participator in the hopes of such\na new literary school, with Flavian for its leader. In the refinements\nof that curious spirit, in its horror of profanities, its fastidious\nsense of a correctness in external form, there was something which\nministered to the old ritual interest, still surviving in him; as if\nhere indeed were involved a kind of sacred service to the\nmother-tongue.\n\nHere, then, was the theory of Euphuism, as manifested in every age in\nwhich the literary conscience has been awakened to forgotten duties\ntowards language, towards the instrument of expression: in fact it does\nbut modify a little the principles of all effective expression at all\ntimes. \u2019Tis art\u2019s function to conceal itself: ars est celare artem:\u2014is\na saying, which, exaggerated by inexact quotation, has perhaps been\noftenest and most confidently quoted by those who have had little\nliterary or other art to conceal; and from the very beginning of\nprofessional literature, the \u201clabour of the file\u201d\u2014a labour in the case\nof Plato, for instance, or Virgil, like that of the oldest of\ngoldsmiths as described by Apuleius, enriching the work by far more\nthan the weight of precious metal it removed\u2014has always had its\nfunction. Sometimes, doubtless, as in later examples of it, this Roman\nEuphuism, determined at any cost to attain beauty in writing\u2014es kallos\ngraphein+\u2014might lapse into its characteristic fopperies or mannerisms,\ninto the \u201cdefects of its qualities,\u201d in truth, not wholly unpleasing\nperhaps, or at least excusable, when looked at as but the toys (so\nCicero calls them), the strictly congenial and appropriate toys, of an\nassiduously cultivated age, which could not help being polite,\ncritical, self-conscious. The mere love of novelty also had, of course,\nits part there: as with the Euphuism of the Elizabethan age, and of the\nmodern French romanticists, its neologies were the ground of one of the\nfavourite charges against it; though indeed, as regards these tricks of\ntaste also, there is nothing new, but a quaint family likeness rather,\nbetween the Euphuists of successive ages. Here, as elsewhere, the power\nof \u201cfashion,\u201d as it is called, is but one minor form, slight enough, it\nmay be, yet distinctly symptomatic, of that deeper yearning of human\nnature towards ideal perfection, which is a continuous force in it; and\nsince in this direction too human nature is limited, such fashions must\nnecessarily reproduce themselves. Among other resemblances to later\ngrowths of Euphuism, its archaisms on the one hand, and its neologies\non the other, the Euphuism of the days of Marcus Aurelius had, in the\ncomposition of verse, its fancy for the refrain. It was a snatch from a\npopular chorus, something he had heard sounding all over the town of\nPisa one April night, one of the first bland and summer-like nights of\nthe year, that Flavian had chosen for the refrain of a poem he was then\npondering\u2014the Pervigilium Veneris\u2014the vigil, or \u201cnocturn,\u201d of Venus.\n\nCertain elderly counsellors, filling what may be thought a constant\npart in the little tragi-comedy which literature and its votaries are\nplaying in all ages, would ask, suspecting some affectation or\nunreality in that minute culture of form:\u2014Cannot those who have a thing\nto say, say it directly? Why not be simple and broad, like the old\nwriters of Greece? And this challenge had at least the effect of\nsetting his thoughts at work on the intellectual situation as it lay\nbetween the children of the present and those earliest masters.\nCertainly, the most wonderful, the unique, point, about the Greek\ngenius, in literature as in everything else, was the entire absence of\nimitation in its productions. How had the burden of precedent, laid\nupon every artist, increased since then! It was all around one:\u2014that\nsmoothly built world of old classical taste, an accomplished fact, with\noverwhelming authority on every detail of the conduct of one\u2019s work.\nWith no fardel on its own back, yet so imperious towards those who came\nlabouring after it, Hellas, in its early freshness, looked as distant\nfrom him even then as it does from ourselves. There might seem to be no\nplace left for novelty or originality,\u2014place only for a patient, an\ninfinite, faultlessness. On this question too Flavian passed through a\nworld of curious art-casuistries, of self-tormenting, at the threshold\nof his work. Was poetic beauty a thing ever one and the same, a type\nabsolute; or, changing always with the soul of time itself, did it\ndepend upon the taste, the peculiar trick of apprehension, the fashion,\nas we say, of each successive age? Might one recover that old, earlier\nsense of it, that earlier manner, in a masterly effort to recall all\nthe complexities of the life, moral and intellectual, of the earlier\nage to which it had belonged? Had there been really bad ages in art or\nliterature? Were all ages, even those earliest, adventurous, matutinal\ndays, in themselves equally poetical or unpoetical; and poetry, the\nliterary beauty, the poetic ideal, always but a borrowed light upon\nmen\u2019s actual life?\n\nHomer had said\u2014\n\nHoi d\u2019 hote d\u00ea limenos polybentheos entos hikonto,\nHistia men steilanto, thesan d\u2019 en n\u00eai melain\u00ea...\nEk de kai autoi bainon epi ph\u00eagmini thalass\u00eas.+\n\n\nAnd how poetic the simple incident seemed, told just thus! Homer was\nalways telling things after this manner. And one might think there had\nbeen no effort in it: that here was but the almost mechanical\ntranscript of a time, naturally, intrinsically, poetic, a time in which\none could hardly have spoken at all without ideal effect, or, the\nsailors pulled down their boat without making a picture in \u201cthe great\nstyle,\u201d against a sky charged with marvels. Must not the mere prose of\nan age, itself thus ideal, have counted for more than half of Homer\u2019s\npoetry? Or might the closer student discover even here, even in Homer,\nthe really mediatorial function of the poet, as between the reader and\nthe actual matter of his experience; the poet waiting, so to speak, in\nan age which had felt itself trite and commonplace enough, on his\nopportunity for the touch of \u201cgolden alchemy,\u201d or at least for the\npleasantly lighted side of things themselves? Might not another, in\none\u2019s own prosaic and used-up time, so uneventful as it had been\nthrough the long reign of these quiet Antonines, in like manner,\ndiscover his ideal, by a due waiting upon it? Would not a future\ngeneration, looking back upon this, under the power of the\nenchanted-distance fallacy, find it ideal to view, in contrast with its\nown languor\u2014the languor that for some reason (concerning which\nAugustine will one day have his view) seemed to haunt men always? Had\nHomer, even, appeared unreal and affected in his poetic flight, to some\nof the people of his own age, as seemed to happen with every new\nliterature in turn? In any case, the intellectual conditions of early\nGreece had been\u2014how different from these! And a true literary tact\nwould accept that difference in forming the primary conception of the\nliterary function at a later time. Perhaps the utmost one could get by\nconscious effort, in the way of a reaction or return to the conditions\nof an earlier and fresher age, would be but novitas, artificial\nartlessness, na\u00efvet\u00e9; and this quality too might have its measure of\neuphuistic charm, direct and sensible enough, though it must count, in\ncomparison with that genuine early Greek newness at the beginning, not\nas the freshness of the open fields, but only of a bunch of\nfield-flowers in a heated room.\n\nThere was, meantime, all this:\u2014on one side, the old pagan culture, for\nus but a fragment, for him an accomplished yet present fact, still a\nliving, united, organic whole, in the entirety of its art, its thought,\nits religions, its sagacious forms of polity, that so weighty authority\nit exercised on every point, being in reality only the measure of its\ncharm for every one: on the other side, the actual world in all its\neager self-assertion, with Flavian himself, in his boundless animation,\nthere, at the centre of the situation. From the natural defects, from\nthe pettiness, of his euphuism, his assiduous cultivation of manner, he\nwas saved by the consciousness that he had a matter to present, very\nreal, at least to him. That preoccupation of the dilettante with what\nmight seem mere details of form, after all, did but serve the purpose\nof bringing to the surface, sincerely and in their integrity, certain\nstrong personal intuitions, a certain vision or apprehension of things\nas really being, with important results, thus, rather than\nthus,\u2014intuitions which the artistic or literary faculty was called upon\nto follow, with the exactness of wax or clay, clothing the model\nwithin. Flavian too, with his fine clear mastery of the practically\neffective, had early laid hold of the principle, as axiomatic in\nliterature: that to know when one\u2019s self is interested, is the first\ncondition of interesting other people. It was a principle, the forcible\napprehension of which made him jealous and fastidious in the selection\nof his intellectual food; often listless while others read or gazed\ndiligently; never pretending to be moved out of mere complaisance to\npeople\u2019s emotions: it served to foster in him a very scrupulous\nliterary sincerity with himself. And it was this uncompromising demand\nfor a matter, in all art, derived immediately from lively personal\nintuition, this constant appeal to individual judgment, which saved his\neuphuism, even at its weakest, from lapsing into mere artifice.\n\nWas the magnificent exordium of Lucretius, addressed to the goddess\nVenus, the work of his earlier manhood, and designed originally to open\nan argument less persistently sombre than that protest against the\nwhole pagan heaven which actually follows it? It is certainly the most\ntypical expression of a mood, still incident to the young poet, as a\nthing peculiar to his youth, when he feels the sentimental current\nsetting forcibly along his veins, and so much as a matter of purely\nphysical excitement, that he can hardly distinguish it from the\nanimation of external nature, the upswelling of the seed in the earth,\nand of the sap through the trees. Flavian, to whom, again, as to his\nlater euphuistic kinsmen, old mythology seemed as full of untried,\nunexpressed motives and interest as human life itself, had long been\noccupied with a kind of mystic hymn to the vernal principle of life in\nthings; a composition shaping itself, little by little, out of a\nthousand dim perceptions, into singularly definite form (definite and\nfirm as fine-art in metal, thought Marius) for which, as I said, he had\ncaught his \u201crefrain,\u201d from the lips of the young men, singing because\nthey could not help it, in the streets of Pisa. And as oftenest happens\nalso, with natures of genuinely poetic quality, those piecemeal\nbeginnings came suddenly to harmonious completeness among the fortunate\nincidents, the physical heat and light, of one singularly happy day.\n\nIt was one of the first hot days of March\u2014\u201cthe sacred day\u201d\u2014on which,\nfrom Pisa, as from many another harbour on the Mediterranean, the Ship\nof Isis went to sea, and every one walked down to the shore-side to\nwitness the freighting of the vessel, its launching and final\nabandonment among the waves, as an object really devoted to the Great\nGoddess, that new rival, or \u201cdouble,\u201d of ancient Venus, and like her a\nfavourite patroness of sailors. On the evening next before, all the\nworld had been abroad to view the illumination of the river; the\nstately lines of building being wreathed with hundreds of many-coloured\nlamps. The young men had poured forth their chorus\u2014\n\nCras amet qui nunquam amavit,\nQuique amavit cras amet\u2014\n\n\nas they bore their torches through the yielding crowd, or rowed their\nlanterned boats up and down the stream, till far into the night, when\nheavy rain-drops had driven the last lingerers home. Morning broke,\nhowever, smiling and serene; and the long procession started betimes.\nThe river, curving slightly, with the smoothly paved streets on either\nside, between its low marble parapet and the fair dwelling-houses,\nformed the main highway of the city; and the pageant, accompanied\nthroughout by innumerable lanterns and wax tapers, took its course up\none of these streets, crossing the water by a bridge up-stream, and\ndown the other, to the haven, every possible standing-place, out of\ndoors and within, being crowded with sight-seers, of whom Marius was\none of the most eager, deeply interested in finding the spectacle much\nas Apuleius had described it in his famous book.\n\nAt the head of the procession, the master of ceremonies, quietly waving\nback the assistants, made way for a number of women, scattering\nperfumes. They were succeeded by a company of musicians, piping and\ntwanging, on instruments the strangest Marius had ever beheld, the\nnotes of a hymn, narrating the first origin of this votive rite to a\nchoir of youths, who marched behind them singing it. The tire-women and\nother personal attendants of the great goddess came next, bearing the\ninstruments of their ministry, and various articles from the sacred\nwardrobe, wrought of the most precious material; some of them with long\nivory combs, plying their hands in wild yet graceful concert of\nmovement as they went, in devout mimicry of the toilet. Placed in their\nrear were the mirror-bearers of the goddess, carrying large mirrors of\nbeaten brass or silver, turned in such a way as to reflect to the great\nbody of worshippers who followed, the face of the mysterious image, as\nit moved on its way, and their faces to it, as though they were in fact\nadvancing to meet the heavenly visitor. They comprehended a multitude\nof both sexes and of all ages, already initiated into the divine\nsecret, clad in fair linen, the females veiled, the males with shining\ntonsures, and every one carrying a sistrum\u2014the richer sort of silver, a\nfew very dainty persons of fine gold\u2014rattling the reeds, with a noise\nlike the jargon of innumerable birds and insects awakened from torpor\nand abroad in the spring sun. Then, borne upon a kind of platform, came\nthe goddess herself, undulating above the heads of the multitude as the\nbearers walked, in mystic robe embroidered with the moon and stars,\nbordered gracefully with a fringe of real fruit and flowers, and with a\nglittering crown upon the head. The train of the procession consisted\nof the priests in long white vestments, close from head to foot,\ndistributed into various groups, each bearing, exposed aloft, one of\nthe sacred symbols of Isis\u2014the corn-fan, the golden asp, the ivory hand\nof equity, and among them the votive ship itself, carved and gilt, and\nadorned bravely with flags flying. Last of all walked the high priest;\nthe people kneeling as he passed to kiss his hand, in which were those\nwell-remembered roses.\n\nMarius followed with the rest to the harbour, where the mystic ship,\nlowered from the shoulders of the priests, was loaded with as much as\nit could carry of the rich spices and other costly gifts, offered in\ngreat profusion by the worshippers, and thus, launched at last upon the\nwater, left the shore, crossing the harbour-bar in the wake of a much\nstouter vessel than itself with a crew of white-robed mariners, whose\nfunction it was, at the appointed moment, finally to desert it on the\nopen sea.\n\nThe remainder of the day was spent by most in parties on the water.\nFlavian and Marius sailed further than they had ever done before to a\nwild spot on the bay, the traditional site of a little Greek colony,\nwhich, having had its eager, stirring life at the time when Etruria was\nstill a power in Italy, had perished in the age of the civil wars. In\nthe absolute transparency of the air on this gracious day, an\ninfinitude of detail from sea and shore reached the eye with sparkling\nclearness, as the two lads sped rapidly over the waves\u2014Flavian at work\nsuddenly, from time to time, with his tablets. They reached land at\nlast. The coral fishers had spread their nets on the sands, with a\ntumble-down of quaint, many-hued treasures, below a little shrine of\nVenus, fluttering and gay with the scarves and napkins and gilded\nshells which these people had offered to the image. Flavian and Marius\nsat down under the shadow of a mass of gray rock or ruin, where the\nsea-gate of the Greek town had been, and talked of life in those old\nGreek colonies. Of this place, all that remained, besides those rude\nstones, was\u2014a handful of silver coins, each with a head of pure and\narchaic beauty, though a little cruel perhaps, supposed to represent\nthe Siren Ligeia, whose tomb was formerly shown here\u2014only these, and an\nancient song, the very strain which Flavian had recovered in those last\nmonths. They were records which spoke, certainly, of the charm of life\nwithin those walls. How strong must have been the tide of men\u2019s\nexistence in that little republican town, so small that this circle of\ngray stones, of service now only by the moisture they gathered for the\nblue-flowering gentians among them, had been the line of its rampart!\nAn epitome of all that was liveliest, most animated and adventurous, in\nthe old Greek people of which it was an offshoot, it had enhanced the\neffect of these gifts by concentration within narrow limits. The band\nof \u201cdevoted youth,\u201d\u2014hiera neot\u00eas.+\u2014of the younger brothers, devoted to\nthe gods and whatever luck the gods might afford, because there was no\nroom for them at home\u2014went forth, bearing the sacred flame from the\nmother hearth; itself a flame, of power to consume the whole material\nof existence in clear light and heat, with no smouldering residue. The\nlife of those vanished townsmen, so brilliant and revolutionary,\napplying so abundantly the personal qualities which alone just then\nMarius seemed to value, associated itself with the actual figure of his\ncompanion, standing there before him, his face enthusiastic with the\nsudden thought of all that; and struck him vividly as precisely the\nfitting opportunity for a nature like his, so hungry for control, for\nascendency over men.\n\nMarius noticed also, however, as high spirits flagged at last, on the\nway home through the heavy dew of the evening, more than physical\nfatigue in Flavian, who seemed to find no refreshment in the coolness.\nThere had been something feverish, perhaps, and like the beginning of\nsickness, about his almost forced gaiety, in this sudden spasm of\nspring; and by the evening of the next day he was lying with a burning\nspot on his forehead, stricken, as was thought from the first, by the\nterrible new disease.\n\nNOTES\n\n\n93. +Corrected from the Macmillan edition misprint \u201csingal.\u201d\n\n\n98. +Transliteration: es kallos graphein. Translation: \u201cTo write\nbeautifully.\u201d\n\n\n100. +Iliad 1.432-33, 437. Transliteration:\n\n\nHoi d\u2019 hote d\u00ea limenos polybentheos entos hikonto,\nHistia men steilanto, thesan d\u2019 en n\u00eai melain\u00ea...\nEk de kai autoi bainon epi ph\u00eagmini thalass\u00eas.\n\n\nEtext editor\u2019s translation:\n\n\nWhen they had safely made deep harbor\nThey took in the sail, laid it in their black ship...\nAnd went ashore just past the breakers.\n\n\n109. +Transliteration: hiera neot\u00eas. Pater translates the phrase,\n\u201cdevoted youth.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII.\nA PAGAN END\n\n\nFor the fantastical colleague of the philosophic emperor Marcus\nAurelius, returning in triumph from the East, had brought in his train,\namong the enemies of Rome, one by no means a captive. People actually\nsickened at a sudden touch of the unsuspected foe, as they watched in\ndense crowds the pathetic or grotesque imagery of failure or success in\nthe triumphal procession. And, as usual, the plague brought with it a\npower to develop all pre-existent germs of superstition. It was by\ndishonour done to Apollo himself, said popular rumour\u2014to Apollo, the\nold titular divinity of pestilence, that the poisonous thing had come\nabroad. Pent up in a golden coffer consecrated to the god, it had\nescaped in the sacrilegious plundering of his temple at Seleucia by the\nsoldiers of Lucius Verus, after a traitorous surprise of that town and\na cruel massacre. Certainly there was something which baffled all\nimaginable precautions and all medical science, in the suddenness with\nwhich the disease broke out simultaneously, here and there, among both\nsoldiers and citizens, even in places far remote from the main line of\nits march in the rear of the victorious army. It seemed to have invaded\nthe whole empire, and some have even thought that, in a mitigated form,\nit permanently remained there. In Rome itself many thousands perished;\nand old authorities tell of farmsteads, whole towns, and even entire\nneighbourhoods, which from that time continued without inhabitants and\nlapsed into wildness or ruin.\n\nFlavian lay at the open window of his lodging, with a fiery pang in the\nbrain, fancying no covering thin or light enough to be applied to his\nbody. His head being relieved after a while, there was distress at the\nchest. It was but the fatal course of the strange new sickness, under\nmany disguises; travelling from the brain to the feet, like a material\nresident, weakening one after another of the organic centres; often,\nwhen it did not kill, depositing various degrees of lifelong infirmity\nin this member or that; and after such descent, returning upwards\nagain, now as a mortal coldness, leaving the entrenchments of the\nfortress of life overturned, one by one, behind it.\n\nFlavian lay there, with the enemy at his breast now in a painful cough,\nbut relieved from that burning fever in the head, amid the rich-scented\nflowers\u2014rare Paestum roses, and the like \u2014procured by Marius for his\nsolace, in a fancied convalescence; and would, at intervals, return to\nlabour at his verses, with a great eagerness to complete and transcribe\nthe work, while Marius sat and wrote at his dictation, one of the\nlatest but not the poorest specimens of genuine Latin poetry.\n\nIt was in fact a kind of nuptial hymn, which, taking its start from the\nthought of nature as the universal mother, celebrated the preliminary\npairing and mating together of all fresh things, in the hot and genial\nspring-time\u2014the immemorial nuptials of the soul of spring itself and\nthe brown earth; and was full of a delighted, mystic sense of what\npassed between them in that fantastic marriage. That mystic burden was\nrelieved, at intervals, by the familiar playfulness of the Latin\nverse-writer in dealing with mythology, which, though coming at so late\na day, had still a wonderful freshness in its old age.\u2014\u201cAmor has put\nhis weapons by and will keep holiday. He was bidden go without apparel,\nthat none might be wounded by his bow and arrows. But take care! In\ntruth he is none the less armed than usual, though he be all unclad.\u201d\n\nIn the expression of all this Flavian seemed, while making it his chief\naim to retain the opulent, many-syllabled vocabulary of the Latin\ngenius, at some points even to have advanced beyond it, in anticipation\nof wholly new laws of taste as regards sound, a new range of sound\nitself. The peculiar resultant note, associating itself with certain\nother experiences of his, was to Marius like the foretaste of an\nentirely novel world of poetic beauty to come. Flavian had caught,\nindeed, something of the rhyming cadence, the sonorous organ-music of\nthe medieval Latin, and therewithal something of its unction and\nmysticity of spirit. There was in his work, along with the last\nsplendour of the classical language, a touch, almost prophetic, of that\ntransformed life it was to have in the rhyming middle age, just about\nto dawn. The impression thus forced upon Marius connected itself with a\nfeeling, the exact inverse of that, known to every one, which seems to\nsay, You have been just here, just thus, before!\u2014a feeling, in his\ncase, not reminiscent but prescient of the future, which passed over\nhim afterwards many times, as he came across certain places and people.\nIt was as if he detected there the process of actual change to a wholly\nundreamed-of and renewed condition of human body and soul: as if he saw\nthe heavy yet decrepit old Roman architecture about him, rebuilding on\nan intrinsically better pattern. Could it have been actually on a new\nmusical instrument that Flavian had first heard the novel accents of\nhis verse? And still Marius noticed there, amid all its richness of\nexpression and imagery, that firmness of outline he had always relished\nso much in the composition of Flavian. Yes! a firmness like that of\nsome master of noble metal-work, manipulating tenacious bronze or gold.\nEven now that haunting refrain, with its impromptu variations, from the\nthroats of those strong young men, came floating through the window.\n\nCras amet qui nunquam amavit,\nQuique amavit cras amet!\n\n\n\u2014repeated Flavian, tremulously, dictating yet one stanza more.\n\nWhat he was losing, his freehold of a soul and body so fortunately\nendowed, the mere liberty of life above-ground, \u201cthose sunny mornings\nin the cornfields by the sea,\u201d as he recollected them one day, when the\nwindow was thrown open upon the early freshness\u2014his sense of all this,\nwas from the first singularly near and distinct, yet rather as of\nsomething he was but debarred the use of for a time than finally\nbidding farewell to. That was while he was still with no very grave\nmisgivings as to the issue of his sickness, and felt the sources of\nlife still springing essentially unadulterate within him. From time to\ntime, indeed, Marius, labouring eagerly at the poem from his dictation,\nwas haunted by a feeling of the triviality of such work just then. The\nrecurrent sense of some obscure danger beyond the mere danger of death,\nvaguer than that and by so much the more terrible, like the menace of\nsome shadowy adversary in the dark with whose mode of attack they had\nno acquaintance, disturbed him now and again through those hours of\nexcited attention to his manuscript, and to the purely physical wants\nof Flavian. Still, during these three days there was much hope and\ncheerfulness, and even jesting. Half-consciously Marius tried to\nprolong one or another relieving circumstance of the day, the\npreparations for rest and morning refreshment, for instance; sadly\nmaking the most of the little luxury of this or that, with something of\nthe feigned cheer of the mother who sets her last morsels before her\nfamished child as for a feast, but really that he \u201cmay eat it and die.\u201d\n\nOn the afternoon of the seventh day he allowed Marius finally to put\naside the unfinished manuscript. For the enemy, leaving the chest quiet\nat length though much exhausted, had made itself felt with full power\nagain in a painful vomiting, which seemed to shake his body asunder,\nwith great consequent prostration. From that time the distress\nincreased rapidly downwards. Omnia tum vero vitai claustra lababant;+\nand soon the cold was mounting with sure pace from the dead feet to the\nhead.\n\nAnd now Marius began more than to suspect what the issue must be, and\nhenceforward could but watch with a sort of agonised fascination the\nrapid but systematic work of the destroyer, faintly relieving a little\nthe mere accidents of the sharper forms of suffering. Flavian himself\nappeared, in full consciousness at last\u2014in clear-sighted, deliberate\nestimate of the actual crisis\u2014to be doing battle with his adversary.\nHis mind surveyed, with great distinctness, the various suggested modes\nof relief. He must without fail get better, he would fancy, might he be\nremoved to a certain place on the hills where as a child he had once\nrecovered from sickness, but found that he could scarcely raise his\nhead from the pillow without giddiness. As if now surely foreseeing the\nend, he would set himself, with an eager effort, and with that eager\nand angry look, which is noted as one of the premonitions of death in\nthis disease, to fashion out, without formal dictation, still a few\nmore broken verses of his unfinished work, in hard-set determination,\ndefiant of pain, to arrest this or that little drop at least from the\nriver of sensuous imagery rushing so quickly past him.\n\nBut at length delirium\u2014symptom that the work of the plague was done,\nand the last resort of life yielding to the enemy\u2014broke the coherent\norder of words and thoughts; and Marius, intent on the coming agony,\nfound his best hope in the increasing dimness of the patient\u2019s mind. In\nintervals of clearer consciousness the visible signs of cold, of sorrow\nand desolation, were very painful. No longer battling with the disease,\nhe seemed as it were to place himself at the disposal of the victorious\nfoe, dying passively, like some dumb creature, in hopeless acquiescence\nat last. That old, half-pleading petulance, unamiable, yet, as it might\nseem, only needing conditions of life a little happier than they had\nactually been, to become refinement of affection, a delicate grace in\nits demand on the sympathy of others, had changed in those moments of\nfull intelligence to a clinging and tremulous gentleness, as he lay\u2014\u201con\nthe very threshold of death\u201d\u2014with a sharply contracted hand in the hand\nof Marius, to his almost surprised joy, winning him now to an\nabsolutely self-forgetful devotion. There was a new sort of pleading in\nthe misty eyes, just because they took such unsteady note of him, which\nmade Marius feel as if guilty; anticipating thus a form of\nself-reproach with which even the tenderest ministrant may be sometimes\nsurprised, when, at death, affectionate labour suddenly ceasing leaves\nroom for the suspicion of some failure of love perhaps, at one or\nanother minute point in it. Marius almost longed to take his share in\nthe suffering, that he might understand so the better how to relieve\nit.\n\nIt seemed that the light of the lamp distressed the patient, and Marius\nextinguished it. The thunder which had sounded all day among the hills,\nwith a heat not unwelcome to Flavian, had given way at nightfall to\nsteady rain; and in the darkness Marius lay down beside him, faintly\nshivering now in the sudden cold, to lend him his own warmth,\nundeterred by the fear of contagion which had kept other people from\npassing near the house. At length about day-break he perceived that the\nlast effort had come with a revival of mental clearness, as Marius\nunderstood by the contact, light as it was, in recognition of him\nthere. \u201cIs it a comfort,\u201d he whispered then, \u201cthat I shall often come\nand weep over you?\u201d\u2014\u201cNot unless I be aware, and hear you weeping!\u201d\n\nThe sun shone out on the people going to work for a long hot day, and\nMarius was standing by the dead, watching, with deliberate purpose to\nfix in his memory every detail, that he might have this picture in\nreserve, should any hour of forgetfulness hereafter come to him with\nthe temptation to feel completely happy again. A feeling of outrage, of\nresentment against nature itself, mingled with an agony of pity, as he\nnoted on the now placid features a certain look of humility, almost\nabject, like the expression of a smitten child or animal, as of one,\nfallen at last, after bewildering struggle, wholly under the power of a\nmerciless adversary. From mere tenderness of soul he would not forget\none circumstance in all that; as a man might piously stamp on his\nmemory the death-scene of a brother wrongfully condemned to die,\nagainst a time that may come.\n\nThe fear of the corpse, which surprised him in his effort to watch by\nit through the darkness, was a hint of his own failing strength, just\nin time. The first night after the washing of the body, he bore stoutly\nenough the tax which affection seemed to demand, throwing the incense\nfrom time to time on the little altar placed beside the bier. It was\nthe recurrence of the thing\u2014that unchanged outline below the coverlet,\namid a silence in which the faintest rustle seemed to speak\u2014that\nfinally overcame his determination. Surely, here, in this alienation,\nthis sense of distance between them, which had come over him before\nthough in minor degree when the mind of Flavian had wandered in his\nsickness, was another of the pains of death. Yet he was able to make\nall due preparations, and go through the ceremonies, shortened a little\nbecause of the infection, when, on a cloudless evening, the funeral\nprocession went forth; himself, the flames of the pyre having done\ntheir work, carrying away the urn of the deceased, in the folds of his\ntoga, to its last resting-place in the cemetery beside the highway, and\nso turning home to sleep in his own desolate lodging.\n\nQuis desiderio sit pudor aut modus\n    Tam cari capitis?\u2014+\n\n\nWhat thought of others\u2019 thoughts about one could there be with the\nregret for \u201cso dear a head\u201d fresh at one\u2019s heart?\n\nNOTES\n\n\n116. +Lucretius, Book VI.1153.\n\n\n120. +Horace, Odes I.xxiv.1-2.\n\n\n\n\nPART THE SECOND\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII.\nANIMULA VAGULA\n\n\nAnimula, vagula, blandula\nHospes comesque corporis,\nQuae nunc abibis in loca?\nPallidula, rigida, nudula.\n\n\nThe Emperor Hadrian to his Soul\n\n\nFlavian was no more. The little marble chest with its dust and tears\nlay cold among the faded flowers. For most people the actual spectacle\nof death brings out into greater reality, at least for the imagination,\nwhatever confidence they may entertain of the soul\u2019s survival in\nanother life. To Marius, greatly agitated by that event, the earthly\nend of Flavian came like a final revelation of nothing less than the\nsoul\u2019s extinction. Flavian had gone out as utterly as the fire among\nthose still beloved ashes. Even that wistful suspense of judgment\nexpressed by the dying Hadrian, regarding further stages of being still\npossible for the soul in some dim journey hence, seemed wholly\nuntenable, and, with it, almost all that remained of the religion of\nhis childhood. Future extinction seemed just then to be what the\nunforced witness of his own nature pointed to. On the other hand, there\ncame a novel curiosity as to what the various schools of ancient\nphilosophy had had to say concerning that strange, fluttering creature;\nand that curiosity impelled him to certain severe studies, in which his\nearlier religious conscience seemed still to survive, as a principle of\nhieratic scrupulousness or integrity of thought, regarding this new\nservice to intellectual light.\n\nAt this time, by his poetic and inward temper, he might have fallen a\nprey to the enervating mysticism, then in wait for ardent souls in many\na melodramatic revival of old religion or theosophy. From all this,\nfascinating as it might actually be to one side of his character, he\nwas kept by a genuine virility there, effective in him, among other\nresults, as a hatred of what was theatrical, and the instinctive\nrecognition that in vigorous intelligence, after all, divinity was most\nlikely to be found a resident. With this was connected the feeling,\nincreasing with his advance to manhood, of a poetic beauty in mere\nclearness of thought, the actually aesthetic charm of a cold austerity\nof mind; as if the kinship of that to the clearness of physical light\nwere something more than a figure of speech. Of all those various\nreligious fantasies, as so many forms of enthusiasm, he could well\nappreciate the picturesque; that was made easy by his natural\nEpicureanism, already prompting him to conceive of himself as but the\npassive spectator of the world around him. But it was to the severer\nreasoning, of which such matters as Epicurean theory are born, that, in\neffect, he now betook himself. Instinctively suspicious of those\nmechanical arcana, those pretended \u201csecrets unveiled\u201d of the\nprofessional mystic, which really bring great and little souls to one\nlevel, for Marius the only possible dilemma lay between that old,\nancestral Roman religion, now become so incredible to him and the\nhonest action of his own untroubled, unassisted intelligence. Even the\nArcana Celestia of Platonism\u2014what the sons of Plato had had to say\nregarding the essential indifference of pure soul to its bodily house\nand merely occasional dwelling-place\u2014seemed to him while his heart was\nthere in the urn with the material ashes of Flavian, or still lingering\nin memory over his last agony, wholly inhuman or morose, as tending to\nalleviate his resentment at nature\u2019s wrong. It was to the sentiment of\nthe body, and the affections it defined\u2014the flesh, of whose force and\ncolour that wandering Platonic soul was but so frail a residue or\nabstract\u2014he must cling. The various pathetic traits of the beloved,\nsuffering, perished body of Flavian, so deeply pondered, had made him a\nmaterialist, but with something of the temper of a devotee.\n\nAs a consequence it might have seemed at first that his care for poetry\nhad passed away, to be replaced by the literature of thought. His\nmuch-pondered manuscript verses were laid aside; and what happened now\nto one, who was certainly to be something of a poet from first to last,\nlooked at the moment like a change from poetry to prose. He came of age\nabout this time, his own master though with beardless face; and at\neighteen, an age at which, then as now, many youths of capacity, who\nfancied themselves poets, secluded themselves from others chiefly in\naffectation and vague dreaming, he secluded himself indeed from others,\nbut in a severe intellectual meditation, that salt of poetry, without\nwhich all the more serious charm is lacking to the imaginative world.\nStill with something of the old religious earnestness of his childhood,\nhe set himself\u2014Sich im Denken zu orientiren\u2014to determine his bearings,\nas by compass, in the world of thought\u2014to get that precise acquaintance\nwith the creative intelligence itself, its structure and capacities,\nits relation to other parts of himself and to other things, without\nwhich, certainly, no poetry can be masterly. Like a young man rich in\nthis world\u2019s goods coming of age, he must go into affairs, and\nascertain his outlook. There must be no disguises. An exact estimate of\nrealities, as towards himself, he must have\u2014a delicately measured\ngradation of certainty in things\u2014from the distant, haunted horizon of\nmere surmise or imagination, to the actual feeling of sorrow in his\nheart, as he reclined one morning, alone instead of in pleasant\ncompany, to ponder the hard sayings of an imperfect old Greek\nmanuscript, unrolled beside him. His former gay companions, meeting him\nin the streets of the old Italian town, and noting the graver lines\ncoming into the face of the sombre but enthusiastic student of\nintellectual structure, who could hold his own so well in the society\nof accomplished older men, were half afraid of him, though proud to\nhave him of their company. Why this reserve?\u2014they asked, concerning the\norderly, self-possessed youth, whose speech and carriage seemed so\ncarefully measured, who was surely no poet like the rapt, dishevelled\nLupus. Was he secretly in love, perhaps, whose toga was so daintily\nfolded, and who was always as fresh as the flowers he wore; or bent on\nhis own line of ambition: or even on riches?\n\nMarius, meantime, was reading freely, in early morning for the most\npart, those writers chiefly who had made it their business to know what\nmight be thought concerning that strange, enigmatic, personal essence,\nwhich had seemed to go out altogether, along with the funeral fires.\nAnd the old Greek who more than any other was now giving form to his\nthoughts was a very hard master. From Epicurus, from the thunder and\nlightning of Lucretius\u2014like thunder and lightning some distance off,\none might recline to enjoy, in a garden of roses\u2014he had gone back to\nthe writer who was in a certain sense the teacher of both, Heraclitus\nof Ionia. His difficult book \u201cConcerning Nature\u201d was even then rare,\nfor people had long since satisfied themselves by the quotation of\ncertain brilliant, isolated, oracles only, out of what was at best a\ntaxing kind of lore. But the difficulty of the early Greek prose did\nbut spur the curiosity of Marius; the writer, the superior clearness of\nwhose intellectual view had so sequestered him from other men, who had\nhad so little joy of that superiority, being avowedly exacting as to\nthe amount of devout attention he required from the student. \u201cThe\nmany,\u201d he said, always thus emphasising the difference between the many\nand the few, are \u201clike people heavy with wine,\u201d \u201cled by children,\u201d\n\u201cknowing not whither they go;\u201d and yet, \u201cmuch learning doth not make\nwise;\u201d and again, \u201cthe ass, after all, would have his thistles rather\nthan fine gold.\u201d\n\nHeraclitus, indeed, had not under-rated the difficulty for \u201cthe many\u201d\nof the paradox with which his doctrine begins, and the due reception of\nwhich must involve a denial of habitual impressions, as the necessary\nfirst step in the way of truth. His philosophy had been developed in\nconscious, outspoken opposition to the current mode of thought, as a\nmatter requiring some exceptional loyalty to pure reason and its \u201cdry\nlight.\u201d Men are subject to an illusion, he protests, regarding matters\napparent to sense. What the uncorrected sense gives was a false\nimpression of permanence or fixity in things, which have really changed\ntheir nature in the very moment in which we see and touch them. And the\nradical flaw in the current mode of thinking would lie herein: that,\nreflecting this false or uncorrected sensation, it attributes to the\nphenomena of experience a durability which does not really belong to\nthem. Imaging forth from those fluid impressions a world of firmly\nout-lined objects, it leads one to regard as a thing stark and dead\nwhat is in reality full of animation, of vigour, of the fire of\nlife\u2014that eternal process of nature, of which at a later time Goethe\nspoke as the \u201cLiving Garment,\u201d whereby God is seen of us, ever in\nweaving at the \u201cLoom of Time.\u201d\n\nAnd the appeal which the old Greek thinker made was, in the first\ninstance, from confused to unconfused sensation; with a sort of\nprophetic seriousness, a great claim and assumption, such as we may\nunderstand, if we anticipate in this preliminary scepticism the\nulterior scope of his speculation, according to which the universal\nmovement of all natural things is but one particular stage, or measure,\nof that ceaseless activity wherein the divine reason consists. The one\ntrue being\u2014that constant subject of all early thought\u2014it was his merit\nto have conceived, not as sterile and stagnant inaction, but as a\nperpetual energy, from the restless stream of which, at certain points,\nsome elements detach themselves, and harden into non-entity and death,\ncorresponding, as outward objects, to man\u2019s inward condition of\nignorance: that is, to the slowness of his faculties. It is with this\nparadox of a subtle, perpetual change in all visible things, that the\nhigh speculation of Heraclitus begins. Hence the scorn he expresses for\nanything like a careless, half-conscious, \u201cuse-and-wont\u201d reception of\nour experience, which took so strong a hold on men\u2019s memories! Hence\nthose many precepts towards a strenuous self-consciousness in all we\nthink and do, that loyalty to cool and candid reason, which makes\nstrict attentiveness of mind a kind of religious duty and service.\n\nThe negative doctrine, then, that the objects of our ordinary\nexperience, fixed as they seem, are really in perpetual change, had\nbeen, as originally conceived, but the preliminary step towards a large\npositive system of almost religious philosophy. Then as now, the\nilluminated philosophic mind might apprehend, in what seemed a mass of\nlifeless matter, the movement of that universal life, in which things,\nand men\u2019s impressions of them, were ever \u201ccoming to be,\u201d alternately\nconsumed and renewed. That continual change, to be discovered by the\nattentive understanding where common opinion found fixed objects, was\nbut the indicator of a subtler but all-pervading motion\u2014the sleepless,\never-sustained, inexhaustible energy of the divine reason itself,\nproceeding always by its own rhythmical logic, and lending to all mind\nand matter, in turn, what life they had. In this \u201cperpetual flux\u201d of\nthings and of souls, there was, as Heraclitus conceived, a continuance,\nif not of their material or spiritual elements, yet of orderly\nintelligible relationships, like the harmony of musical notes, wrought\nout in and through the series of their mutations\u2014ordinances of the\ndivine reason, maintained throughout the changes of the phenomenal\nworld; and this harmony in their mutation and opposition, was, after\nall, a principle of sanity, of reality, there. But it happened, that,\nof all this, the first, merely sceptical or negative step, that easiest\nstep on the threshold, had alone remained in general memory; and the\n\u201cdoctrine of motion\u201d seemed to those who had felt its seduction to make\nall fixed knowledge impossible. The swift passage of things, the still\nswifter passage of those modes of our conscious being which seemed to\nreflect them, might indeed be the burning of the divine fire: but what\nwas ascertained was that they did pass away like a devouring flame, or\nlike the race of water in the mid-stream\u2014too swiftly for any real\nknowledge of them to be attainable. Heracliteanism had grown to be\nalmost identical with the famous doctrine of the sophist Protagoras,\nthat the momentary, sensible apprehension of the individual was the\nonly standard of what is or is not, and each one the measure of all\nthings to himself. The impressive name of Heraclitus had become but an\nauthority for a philosophy of the despair of knowledge.\n\nAnd as it had been with his original followers in Greece, so it\nhappened now with the later Roman disciple. He, too, paused at the\napprehension of that constant motion of things\u2014the drift of flowers, of\nlittle or great souls, of ambitious systems, in the stream around him,\nthe first source, the ultimate issue, of which, in regions out of\nsight, must count with him as but a dim problem. The bold mental flight\nof the old Greek master from the fleeting, competing objects of\nexperience to that one universal life, in which the whole sphere of\nphysical change might be reckoned as but a single pulsation, remained\nby him as hypothesis only\u2014the hypothesis he actually preferred, as in\nitself most credible, however scantily realisable even by the\nimagination\u2014yet still as but one unverified hypothesis, among many\nothers, concerning the first principle of things. He might reserve it\nas a fine, high, visionary consideration, very remote upon the\nintellectual ladder, just at the point, indeed, where that ladder\nseemed to pass into the clouds, but for which there was certainly no\ntime left just now by his eager interest in the real objects so close\nto him, on the lowlier earthy steps nearest the ground. And those\nchildish days of reverie, when he played at priests, played in many\nanother day-dream, working his way from the actual present, as far as\nhe might, with a delightful sense of escape in replacing the outer\nworld of other people by an inward world as himself really cared to\nhave it, had made him a kind of \u201cidealist.\u201d He was become aware of the\npossibility of a large dissidence between an inward and somewhat\nexclusive world of vivid personal apprehension, and the unimproved,\nunheightened reality of the life of those about him. As a consequence,\nhe was ready now to concede, somewhat more easily than others, the\nfirst point of his new lesson, that the individual is to himself the\nmeasure of all things, and to rely on the exclusive certainty to\nhimself of his own impressions. To move afterwards in that outer world\nof other people, as though taking it at their estimate, would be\npossible henceforth only as a kind of irony. And as with the Vicaire\nSavoyard, after reflecting on the variations of philosophy, \u201cthe first\nfruit he drew from that reflection was the lesson of a limitation of\nhis researches to what immediately interested him; to rest peacefully\nin a profound ignorance as to all beside; to disquiet himself only\nconcerning those things which it was of import for him to know.\u201d At\nleast he would entertain no theory of conduct which did not allow its\ndue weight to this primary element of incertitude or negation, in the\nconditions of man\u2019s life. Just here he joined company, retracing in his\nindividual mental pilgrimage the historic order of human thought, with\nanother wayfarer on the journey, another ancient Greek master, the\nfounder of the Cyrenaic philosophy, whose weighty traditional\nutterances (for he had left no writing) served in turn to give\neffective outline to the contemplations of Marius. There was something\nin the doctrine itself congruous with the place wherein it had its\nbirth; and for a time Marius lived much, mentally, in the brilliant\nGreek colony which had given a dubious name to the philosophy of\npleasure. It hung, for his fancy, between the mountains and the sea,\namong richer than Italian gardens, on a certain breezy table-land\nprojecting from the African coast, some hundreds of miles southward\nfrom Greece. There, in a delightful climate, with something of\ntransalpine temperance amid its luxury, and withal in an inward\natmosphere of temperance which did but further enhance the brilliancy\nof human life, the school of Cyrene had maintained itself as almost one\nwith the family of its founder; certainly as nothing coarse or unclean,\nand under the influence of accomplished women.\n\nAristippus of Cyrene too had left off in suspense of judgment as to\nwhat might really lie behind\u2014flammantia moenia mundi: the flaming\nramparts of the world. Those strange, bold, sceptical surmises, which\nhad haunted the minds of the first Greek enquirers as merely abstract\ndoubt, which had been present to the mind of Heraclitus as one element\nonly in a system of abstract philosophy, became with Aristippus a very\nsubtly practical worldly-wisdom. The difference between him and those\nobscure earlier thinkers is almost like that between an ancient thinker\ngenerally, and a modern man of the world: it was the difference between\nthe mystic in his cell, or the prophet in the desert, and the expert,\ncosmopolitan, administrator of his dark sayings, translating the\nabstract thoughts of the master into terms, first of all, of sentiment.\nIt has been sometimes seen, in the history of the human mind, that when\nthus translated into terms of sentiment\u2014of sentiment, as lying already\nhalf-way towards practice\u2014the abstract ideas of metaphysics for the\nfirst time reveal their true significance. The metaphysical principle,\nin itself, as it were, without hands or feet, becomes impressive,\nfascinating, of effect, when translated into a precept as to how it\nwere best to feel and act; in other words, under its sentimental or\nethical equivalent. The leading idea of the great master of Cyrene, his\ntheory that things are but shadows, and that we, even as they, never\ncontinue in one stay, might indeed have taken effect as a languid,\nenervating, consumptive nihilism, as a precept of \u201crenunciation,\u201d which\nwould touch and handle and busy itself with nothing. But in the\nreception of metaphysical formulae, all depends, as regards their\nactual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil\nof human nature into which they fall\u2014the company they find already\npresent there, on their admission into the house of thought; there\nbeing at least so much truth as this involves in the theological maxim,\nthat the reception of this or that speculative conclusion is really a\nmatter of will. The persuasion that all is vanity, with this happily\nconstituted Greek, who had been a genuine disciple of Socrates and\nreflected, presumably, something of his blitheness in the face of the\nworld, his happy way of taking all chances, generated neither frivolity\nnor sourness, but induced, rather, an impression, just serious enough,\nof the call upon men\u2019s attention of the crisis in which they find\nthemselves. It became the stimulus towards every kind of activity, and\nprompted a perpetual, inextinguishable thirst after experience.\n\nWith Marius, then, the influence of the philosopher of pleasure\ndepended on this, that in him an abstract doctrine, originally somewhat\nacrid, had fallen upon a rich and genial nature, well fitted to\ntransform it into a theory of practice, of considerable stimulative\npower towards a fair life. What Marius saw in him was the spectacle of\none of the happiest temperaments coming, so to speak, to an\nunderstanding with the most depressing of theories; accepting the\nresults of a metaphysical system which seemed to concentrate into\nitself all the weakening trains of thought in earlier Greek\nspeculation, and making the best of it; turning its hard, bare truths,\nwith wonderful tact, into precepts of grace, and delicate wisdom, and a\ndelicate sense of honour. Given the hardest terms, supposing our days\nare indeed but a shadow, even so, we may well adorn and beautify, in\nscrupulous self-respect, our souls, and whatever our souls touch\nupon\u2014these wonderful bodies, these material dwelling-places through\nwhich the shadows pass together for a while, the very raiment we wear,\nour very pastimes and the intercourse of society. The most discerning\njudges saw in him something like the graceful \u201chumanities\u201d of the later\nRoman, and our modern \u201cculture,\u201d as it is termed; while Horace recalled\nhis sayings as expressing best his own consummate amenity in the\nreception of life.\n\nIn this way, for Marius, under the guidance of that old master of\ndecorous living, those eternal doubts as to the criteria of truth\nreduced themselves to a scepticism almost drily practical, a scepticism\nwhich developed the opposition between things as they are and our\nimpressions and thoughts concerning them\u2014the possibility, if an outward\nworld does really exist, of some faultiness in our apprehension of\nit\u2014the doctrine, in short, of what is termed \u201cthe subjectivity of\nknowledge.\u201d That is a consideration, indeed, which lies as an element\nof weakness, like some admitted fault or flaw, at the very foundation\nof every philosophical account of the universe; which confronts all\nphilosophies at their starting, but with which none have really dealt\nconclusively, some perhaps not quite sincerely; which those who are not\nphilosophers dissipate by \u201ccommon,\u201d but unphilosophical, sense, or by\nreligious faith. The peculiar strength of Marius was, to have\napprehended this weakness on the threshold of human knowledge, in the\nwhole range of its consequences. Our knowledge is limited to what we\nfeel, he reflected: we need no proof that we feel. But can we be sure\nthat things are at all like our feelings? Mere peculiarities in the\ninstruments of our cognition, like the little knots and waves on the\nsurface of a mirror, may distort the matter they seem but to represent.\nOf other people we cannot truly know even the feelings, nor how far\nthey would indicate the same modifications, each one of a personality\nreally unique, in using the same terms as ourselves; that \u201ccommon\nexperience,\u201d which is sometimes proposed as a satisfactory basis of\ncertainty, being after all only a fixity of language. But our own\nimpressions!\u2014The light and heat of that blue veil over our heads, the\nheavens spread out, perhaps not like a curtain over anything!\u2014How\nreassuring, after so long a debate about the rival criteria of truth,\nto fall back upon direct sensation, to limit one\u2019s aspirations after\nknowledge to that! In an age still materially so brilliant, so expert\nin the artistic handling of material things, with sensible capacities\nstill in undiminished vigour, with the whole world of classic art and\npoetry outspread before it, and where there was more than eye or ear\ncould well take in\u2014how natural the determination to rely exclusively\nupon the phenomena of the senses, which certainly never deceive us\nabout themselves, about which alone we can never deceive ourselves!\n\nAnd so the abstract apprehension that the little point of this present\nmoment alone really is, between a past which has just ceased to be and\na future which may never come, became practical with Marius, under the\nform of a resolve, as far as possible, to exclude regret and desire,\nand yield himself to the improvement of the present with an absolutely\ndisengaged mind. America is here and now\u2014here, or nowhere: as Wilhelm\nMeister finds out one day, just not too late, after so long looking\nvaguely across the ocean for the opportunity of the development of his\ncapacities. It was as if, recognising in perpetual motion the law of\nnature, Marius identified his own way of life cordially with it,\n\u201cthrowing himself into the stream,\u201d so to speak. He too must maintain a\nharmony with that soul of motion in things, by constantly renewed\nmobility of character.\n\nOmnis Aristippum decuit color et status et res.\u2014\n\n\nThus Horace had summed up that perfect manner in the reception of life\nattained by his old Cyrenaic master; and the first practical\nconsequence of the metaphysic which lay behind that perfect manner, had\nbeen a strict limitation, almost the renunciation, of metaphysical\nenquiry itself. Metaphysic\u2014that art, as it has so often proved, in the\nwords of Michelet, _de s\u2019\u00e9garer avec m\u00e9thode_, of bewildering oneself\nmethodically:\u2014one must spend little time upon that! In the school of\nCyrene, great as was its mental incisiveness, logical and physical\nspeculation, theoretic interests generally, had been valued only so far\nas they served to give a groundwork, an intellectual justification, to\nthat exclusive concern with practical ethics which was a note of the\nCyrenaic philosophy. How earnest and enthusiastic, how true to itself,\nunder how many varieties of character, had been the effort of the\nGreeks after Theory\u2014The\u00f4ria\u2014that vision of a wholly reasonable world,\nwhich, according to the greatest of them, literally makes man like God:\nhow loyally they had still persisted in the quest after that, in spite\nof how many disappointments! In the Gospel of Saint John, perhaps, some\nof them might have found the kind of vision they were seeking for; but\nnot in \u201cdoubtful disputations\u201d concerning \u201cbeing\u201d and \u201cnot being,\u201d\nknowledge and appearance. Men\u2019s minds, even young men\u2019s minds, at that\nlate day, might well seem oppressed by the weariness of systems which\nhad so far outrun positive knowledge; and in the mind of Marius, as in\nthat old school of Cyrene, this sense of ennui, combined with appetites\nso youthfully vigorous, brought about reaction, a sort of suicide\n(instances of the like have been seen since) by which a great\nmetaphysical acumen was devoted to the function of proving metaphysical\nspeculation impossible, or useless. Abstract theory was to be valued\nonly just so far as it might serve to clear the tablet of the mind from\nsuppositions no more than half realisable, or wholly visionary, leaving\nit in flawless evenness of surface to the impressions of an experience,\nconcrete and direct.\n\nTo be absolutely virgin towards such experience, by ridding ourselves\nof such abstractions as are but the ghosts of bygone impressions\u2014to be\nrid of the notions we have made for ourselves, and that so often only\nmisrepresent the experience of which they profess to be the\nrepresentation\u2014_idola_, idols, false appearances, as Bacon calls them\nlater\u2014to neutralise the distorting influence of metaphysical system by\nan all-accomplished metaphysic skill: it is this bold, hard, sober\nrecognition, under a very \u201cdry light,\u201d of its own proper aim, in union\nwith a habit of feeling which on the practical side may perhaps open a\nwide doorway to human weakness, that gives to the Cyrenaic doctrine, to\nreproductions of this doctrine in the time of Marius or in our own,\ntheir gravity and importance. It was a school to which the young man\nmight come, eager for truth, expecting much from philosophy, in no\nignoble curiosity, aspiring after nothing less than an \u201cinitiation.\u201d He\nwould be sent back, sooner or later, to experience, to the world of\nconcrete impressions, to things as they may be seen, heard, felt by\nhim; but with a wonderful machinery of observation, and free from the\ntyranny of mere theories.\n\nSo, in intervals of repose, after the agitation which followed the\ndeath of Flavian, the thoughts of Marius ran, while he felt himself as\nif returned to the fine, clear, peaceful light of that pleasant school\nof healthfully sensuous wisdom, in the brilliant old Greek colony, on\nits fresh upland by the sea. Not pleasure, but a general completeness\nof life, was the practical ideal to which this anti-metaphysical\nmetaphysic really pointed. And towards such a full or complete life, a\nlife of various yet select sensation, the most direct and effective\nauxiliary must be, in a word, Insight. Liberty of soul, freedom from\nall partial and misrepresentative doctrine which does but relieve one\nelement in our experience at the cost of another, freedom from all\nembarrassment alike of regret for the past and of calculation on the\nfuture: this would be but preliminary to the real business of\neducation\u2014insight, insight through culture, into all that the present\nmoment holds in trust for us, as we stand so briefly in its presence.\nFrom that maxim of Life as the end of life, followed, as a practical\nconsequence, the desirableness of refining all the instruments of\ninward and outward intuition, of developing all their capacities, of\ntesting and exercising one\u2019s self in them, till one\u2019s whole nature\nbecame one complex medium of reception, towards the vision\u2014the\n\u201cbeatific vision,\u201d if we really cared to make it such\u2014of our actual\nexperience in the world. Not the conveyance of an abstract body of\ntruths or principles, would be the aim of the right education of one\u2019s\nself, or of another, but the conveyance of an art\u2014an art in some degree\npeculiar to each individual character; with the modifications, that is,\ndue to its special constitution, and the peculiar circumstances of its\ngrowth, inasmuch as no one of us is \u201clike another, all in all.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX.\nNEW CYRENAICISM\n\n\nSuch were the practical conclusions drawn for himself by Marius, when\nsomewhat later he had outgrown the mastery of others, from the\nprinciple that \u201call is vanity.\u201d If he could but count upon the present,\nif a life brief at best could not certainly be shown to conduct one\nanywhere beyond itself, if men\u2019s highest curiosity was indeed so\npersistently baffled\u2014then, with the Cyrenaics of all ages, he would at\nleast fill up the measure of that present with vivid sensations, and\nsuch intellectual apprehensions, as, in strength and directness and\ntheir immediately realised values at the bar of an actual experience,\nare most like sensations. So some have spoken in every age; for, like\nall theories which really express a strong natural tendency of the\nhuman mind or even one of its characteristic modes of weakness, this\nvein of reflection is a constant tradition in philosophy. Every age of\nEuropean thought has had its Cyrenaics or Epicureans, under many\ndisguises: even under the hood of the monk.\n\nBut\u2014Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die!\u2014is a proposal, the real\nimport of which differs immensely, according to the natural taste, and\nthe acquired judgment, of the guests who sit at the table. It may\nexpress nothing better than the instinct of Dante\u2019s Ciacco, the\naccomplished glutton, in the mud of the Inferno;+ or, since on no\nhypothesis does man \u201clive by bread alone,\u201d may come to be identical\nwith\u2014\u201cMy meat is to do what is just and kind;\u201d while the soul, which\ncan make no sincere claim to have apprehended anything beyond the veil\nof immediate experience, yet never loses a sense of happiness in\nconforming to the highest moral ideal it can clearly define for itself;\nand actually, though but with so faint hope, does the \u201cFather\u2019s\nbusiness.\u201d\n\nIn that age of Marcus Aurelius, so completely disabused of the\nmetaphysical ambition to pass beyond \u201cthe flaming ramparts of the\nworld,\u201d but, on the other hand, possessed of so vast an accumulation of\nintellectual treasure, with so wide a view before it over all varieties\nof what is powerful or attractive in man and his works, the thoughts of\nMarius did but follow the line taken by the majority of educated\npersons, though to a different issue. Pitched to a really high and\nserious key, the precept\u2014Be perfect in regard to what is here and now:\nthe precept of \u201cculture,\u201d as it is called, or of a complete\neducation\u2014might at least save him from the vulgarity and heaviness of a\ngeneration, certainly of no general fineness of temper, though with a\nmaterial well-being abundant enough. Conceded that what is secure in\nour existence is but the sharp apex of the present moment between two\nhypothetical eternities, and all that is real in our experience but a\nseries of fleeting impressions:\u2014so Marius continued the sceptical\nargument he had condensed, as the matter to hold by, from his various\nphilosophical reading:\u2014given, that we are never to get beyond the walls\nof the closely shut cell of one\u2019s own personality; that the ideas we\nare somehow impelled to form of an outer world, and of other minds akin\nto our own, are, it may be, but a day-dream, and the thought of any\nworld beyond, a day-dream perhaps idler still: then, he, at least, in\nwhom those fleeting impressions\u2014faces, voices, material sunshine\u2014were\nvery real and imperious, might well set himself to the consideration,\nhow such actual moments as they passed might be made to yield their\nutmost, by the most dexterous training of capacity. Amid abstract\nmetaphysical doubts, as to what might lie one step only beyond that\nexperience, reinforcing the deep original materialism or earthliness of\nhuman nature itself, bound so intimately to the sensuous world, let him\nat least make the most of what was \u201chere and now.\u201d In the actual\ndimness of ways from means to ends\u2014ends in themselves desirable, yet\nfor the most part distant and for him, certainly, below the visible\nhorizon\u2014he would at all events be sure that the means, to use the\nwell-worn terminology, should have something of finality or perfection\nabout them, and themselves partake, in a measure, of the more excellent\nnature of ends\u2014that the means should justify the end.\n\nWith this view he would demand culture, paideia,+ as the Cyrenaics\nsaid, or, in other words, a wide, a complete, education\u2014an education\npartly negative, as ascertaining the true limits of man\u2019s capacities,\nbut for the most part positive, and directed especially to the\nexpansion and refinement of the power of reception; of those powers,\nabove all, which are immediately relative to fleeting phenomena, the\npowers of emotion and sense. In such an education, an \u201caesthetic\u201d\neducation, as it might now be termed, and certainly occupied very\nlargely with those aspects of things which affect us pleasurably\nthrough sensation, art, of course, including all the finer sorts of\nliterature, would have a great part to play. The study of music, in\nthat wider Platonic sense, according to which, music comprehends all\nthose matters over which the Muses of Greek mythology preside, would\nconduct one to an exquisite appreciation of all the finer traits of\nnature and of man. Nay! the products of the imagination must themselves\nbe held to present the most perfect forms of life\u2014spirit and matter\nalike under their purest and most perfect conditions\u2014the most strictly\nappropriate objects of that impassioned contemplation, which, in the\nworld of intellectual discipline, as in the highest forms of morality\nand religion, must be held to be the essential function of the\n\u201cperfect.\u201d Such manner of life might come even to seem a kind of\nreligion\u2014an inward, visionary, mystic piety, or religion, by virtue of\nits effort to live days \u201clovely and pleasant\u201d in themselves, here and\nnow, and with an all-sufficiency of well-being in the immediate sense\nof the object contemplated, independently of any faith, or hope that\nmight be entertained as to their ulterior tendency. In this way, the\ntrue aesthetic culture would be realisable as a new form of the\ncontemplative life, founding its claim on the intrinsic \u201cblessedness\u201d\nof \u201cvision\u201d\u2014the vision of perfect men and things. One\u2019s human nature,\nindeed, would fain reckon on an assured and endless future, pleasing\nitself with the dream of a final home, to be attained at some still\nremote date, yet with a conscious, delightful home-coming at last, as\ndepicted in many an old poetic Elysium. On the other hand, the world of\nperfected sensation, intelligence, emotion, is so close to us, and so\nattractive, that the most visionary of spirits must needs represent the\nworld unseen in colours, and under a form really borrowed from it. Let\nme be sure then\u2014might he not plausibly say?\u2014that I miss no detail of\nthis life of realised consciousness in the present! Here at least is a\nvision, a theory, the\u00f4ria,+ which reposes on no basis of unverified\nhypothesis, which makes no call upon a future after all somewhat\nproblematic; as it would be unaffected by any discovery of an\nEmpedocles (improving on the old story of Prometheus) as to what had\nreally been the origin, and course of development, of man\u2019s actually\nattained faculties and that seemingly divine particle of reason or\nspirit in him. Such a doctrine, at more leisurable moments, would of\ncourse have its precepts to deliver on the embellishment, generally, of\nwhat is near at hand, on the adornment of life, till, in a not\nimpracticable rule of conduct, one\u2019s existence, from day to day, came\nto be like a well-executed piece of music; that \u201cperpetual motion\u201d in\nthings (so Marius figured the matter to himself, under the old Greek\nimageries) according itself to a kind of cadence or harmony.\n\nIt was intelligible that this \u201caesthetic\u201d philosophy might find itself\n(theoretically, at least, and by way of a curious question in\ncasuistry, legitimate from its own point of view) weighing the claims\nof that eager, concentrated, impassioned realisation of experience,\nagainst those of the received morality. Conceiving its own function in\na somewhat desperate temper, and becoming, as every high-strung form of\nsentiment, as the religious sentiment itself, may become, somewhat\nantinomian, when, in its effort towards the order of experiences it\nprefers, it is confronted with the traditional and popular morality, at\npoints where that morality may look very like a convention, or a mere\nstage-property of the world, it would be found, from time to time,\nbreaking beyond the limits of the actual moral order; perhaps not\nwithout some pleasurable excitement in so bold a venture.\n\nWith the possibility of some such hazard as this, in thought or even in\npractice\u2014that it might be, though refining, or tonic even, in the case\nof those strong and in health, yet, as Pascal says of the kindly and\ntemperate wisdom of Montaigne, \u201cpernicious for those who have any\nnatural tendency to impiety or vice,\u201d the line of reflection traced out\nabove, was fairly chargeable.\u2014Not, however, with \u201chedonism\u201d and its\nsupposed consequences. The blood, the heart, of Marius were still pure.\nHe knew that his carefully considered theory of practice braced him,\nwith the effect of a moral principle duly recurring to mind every\nmorning, towards the work of a student, for which he might seem\nintended. Yet there were some among his acquaintance who jumped to the\nconclusion that, with the \u201cEpicurean stye,\u201d he was making\npleasure\u2014pleasure, as they so poorly conceived it\u2014the sole motive of\nlife; and they precluded any exacter estimate of the situation by\ncovering it with a high-sounding general term, through the vagueness of\nwhich they were enabled to see the severe and laborious youth in the\nvulgar company of Lais. Words like \u201chedonism\u201d\u2014 terms of large and vague\ncomprehension\u2014above all when used for a purpose avowedly controversial,\nhave ever been the worst examples of what are called \u201cquestion-begging\nterms;\u201d and in that late age in which Marius lived, amid the dust of so\nmany centuries of philosophical debate, the air was full of them. Yet\nthose who used that reproachful Greek term for the philosophy of\npleasure, were hardly more likely than the old Greeks themselves (on\nwhom regarding this very subject of the theory of pleasure, their\nmasters in the art of thinking had so emphatically to impress the\nnecessity of \u201cmaking distinctions\u201d) to come to any very delicately\ncorrect ethical conclusions by a reasoning, which began with a general\nterm, comprehensive enough to cover pleasures so different in quality,\nin their causes and effects, as the pleasures of wine and love, of art\nand science, of religious enthusiasm and political enterprise, and of\nthat taste or curiosity which satisfied itself with long days of\nserious study. Yet, in truth, each of those pleasurable modes of\nactivity, may, in its turn, fairly become the ideal of the \u201chedonistic\u201d\ndoctrine. Really, to the phase of reflection through which Marius was\nthen passing, the charge of \u201chedonism,\u201d whatever its true weight might\nbe, was not properly applicable at all. Not pleasure, but fulness of\nlife, and \u201cinsight\u201d as conducting to that fulness\u2014energy, variety, and\nchoice of experience, including noble pain and sorrow even, loves such\nas those in the exquisite old story of Apuleius, sincere and strenuous\nforms of the moral life, such as Seneca and Epictetus\u2014whatever form of\nhuman life, in short, might be heroic, impassioned, ideal: from these\nthe \u201cnew Cyrenaicism\u201d of Marius took its criterion of values. It was a\ntheory, indeed, which might properly be regarded as in great degree\ncoincident with the main principle of the Stoics themselves, and an\nolder version of the precept \u201cWhatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it\nwith thy might\u201d\u2014a doctrine so widely acceptable among the nobler\nspirits of that time. And, as with that, its mistaken tendency would\nlie in the direction of a kind of idolatry of mere life, or natural\ngift, or strength\u2014l\u2019id\u00f4latrie des talents.\n\nTo understand the various forms of ancient art and thought, the various\nforms of actual human feeling (the only new thing, in a world almost\ntoo opulent in what was old) to satisfy, with a kind of scrupulous\nequity, the claims of these concrete and actual objects on his\nsympathy, his intelligence, his senses\u2014to \u201cpluck out the heart of their\nmystery,\u201d and in turn become the interpreter of them to others: this\nhad now defined itself for Marius as a very narrowly practical design:\nit determined his choice of a vocation to live by. It was the era of\nthe rhetoricians, or sophists, as they were sometimes called; of men\nwho came in some instances to great fame and fortune, by way of a\nliterary cultivation of \u201cscience.\u201d That science, it has been often\nsaid, must have been wholly an affair of words. But in a world,\nconfessedly so opulent in what was old, the work, even of genius, must\nnecessarily consist very much in criticism; and, in the case of the\nmore excellent specimens of his class, the rhetorician was, after all,\nthe eloquent and effective interpreter, for the delighted ears of\nothers, of what understanding himself had come by, in years of travel\nand study, of the beautiful house of art and thought which was the\ninheritance of the age. The emperor Marcus Aurelius, to whose service\nMarius had now been called, was himself, more or less openly, a\n\u201clecturer.\u201d That late world, amid many curiously vivid modern traits,\nhad this spectacle, so familiar to ourselves, of the public lecturer or\nessayist; in some cases adding to his other gifts that of the Christian\npreacher, who knows how to touch people\u2019s sensibilities on behalf of\nthe suffering. To follow in the way of these successes, was the natural\ninstinct of youthful ambition; and it was with no vulgar egotism that\nMarius, at the age of nineteen, determined, like many another young man\nof parts, to enter as a student of rhetoric at Rome.\n\nThough the manner of his work was changed formally from poetry to\nprose, he remained, and must always be, of the poetic temper: by which,\nI mean, among other things, that quite independently of the general\nhabit of that pensive age he lived much, and as it were by system, in\nreminiscence. Amid his eager grasping at the sensation, the\nconsciousness, of the present, he had come to see that, after all, the\nmain point of economy in the conduct of the present, was the\nquestion:\u2014How will it look to me, at what shall I value it, this day\nnext year?\u2014that in any given day or month one\u2019s main concern was its\nimpression for the memory. A strange trick memory sometimes played him;\nfor, with no natural gradation, what was of last month, or of\nyesterday, of to-day even, would seem as far off, as entirely detached\nfrom him, as things of ten years ago. Detached from him, yet very real,\nthere lay certain spaces of his life, in delicate perspective, under a\nfavourable light; and, somehow, all the less fortunate detail and\ncircumstance had parted from them. Such hours were oftenest those in\nwhich he had been helped by work of others to the pleasurable\napprehension of art, of nature, or of life. \u201cNot what I do, but what I\nam, under the power of this vision\u201d\u2014he would say to himself\u2014\u201cis what\nwere indeed pleasing to the gods!\u201d\n\nAnd yet, with a kind of inconsistency in one who had taken for his\nphilosophic ideal the monochronos h\u00eadon\u00ea+ of Aristippus\u2014the pleasure of\nthe ideal present, of the mystic now\u2014there would come, together with\nthat precipitate sinking of things into the past, a desire, after all,\nto retain \u201cwhat was so transitive.\u201d Could he but arrest, for others\nalso, certain clauses of experience, as the imaginative memory\npresented them to himself! In those grand, hot summers, he would have\nimprisoned the very perfume of the flowers. To create, to live,\nperhaps, a little while beyond the allotted hours, if it were but in a\nfragment of perfect expression:\u2014it was thus his longing defined itself\nfor something to hold by amid the \u201cperpetual flux.\u201d With men of his\nvocation, people were apt to say, words were things. Well! with him,\nwords should be indeed things,\u2014the word, the phrase, valuable in exact\nproportion to the transparency with which it conveyed to others the\napprehension, the emotion, the mood, so vividly real within himself.\nVerbaque provisam rem non invita sequentur:+ Virile apprehension of the\ntrue nature of things, of the true nature of one\u2019s own impression,\nfirst of all!\u2014words would follow that naturally, a true understanding\nof one\u2019s self being ever the first condition of genuine style. Language\ndelicate and measured, the delicate Attic phrase, for instance, in\nwhich the eminent Aristeides could speak, was then a power to which\npeople\u2019s hearts, and sometimes even their purses, readily responded.\nAnd there were many points, as Marius thought, on which the heart of\nthat age greatly needed to be touched. He hardly knew how strong that\nold religious sense of responsibility, the conscience, as we call it,\nstill was within him\u2014a body of inward impressions, as real as those so\nhighly valued outward ones\u2014to offend against which, brought with it a\nstrange feeling of disloyalty, as to a person. And the determination,\nadhered to with no misgiving, to add nothing, not so much as a\ntransient sigh, to the great total of men\u2019s unhappiness, in his way\nthrough the world:\u2014that too was something to rest on, in the drift of\nmere \u201cappearances.\u201d\n\nAll this would involve a life of industry, of industrious study, only\npossible through healthy rule, keeping clear the eye alike of body and\nsoul. For the male element, the logical conscience asserted itself now,\nwith opening manhood\u2014asserted itself, even in his literary style, by a\ncertain firmness of outline, that touch of the worker in metal, amid\nits richness. Already he blamed instinctively alike in his work and in\nhimself, as youth so seldom does, all that had not passed a long and\nliberal process of erasure. The happy phrase or sentence was really\nmodelled upon a cleanly finished structure of scrupulous thought. The\nsuggestive force of the one master of his development, who had battled\nso hard with imaginative prose; the utterance, the golden utterance, of\nthe other, so content with its living power of persuasion that he had\nnever written at all,\u2014in the commixture of these two qualities he set\nup his literary ideal, and this rare blending of grace with an\nintellectual rigour or astringency, was the secret of a singular\nexpressiveness in it.\n\nHe acquired at this time a certain bookish air, the somewhat sombre\nhabitude of the avowed scholar, which though it never interfered with\nthe perfect tone, \u201cfresh and serenely disposed,\u201d of the Roman\ngentleman, yet qualified it as by an interesting oblique trait, and\nfrightened away some of his equals in age and rank. The sober\ndiscretion of his thoughts, his sustained habit of meditation, the\nsense of those negative conclusions enabling him to concentrate\nhimself, with an absorption so entire, upon what is immediately here\nand now, gave him a peculiar manner of intellectual confidence, as of\none who had indeed been initiated into a great secret.\u2014Though with an\nair so disengaged, he seemed to be living so intently in the visible\nworld! And now, in revolt against that pre-occupation with other\npersons, which had so often perturbed his spirit, his wistful\nspeculations as to what the real, the greater, experience might be,\ndetermined in him, not as the longing for love\u2014to be with Cynthia, or\nAspasia\u2014but as a thirst for existence in exquisite places. The veil\nthat was to be lifted for him lay over the works of the old masters of\nart, in places where nature also had used her mastery. And it was just\nat this moment that a summons to Rome reached him.\n\nNOTES\n\n\n145. +Canto VI.\n\n\n147. +Transliteration: paideia. Definition \u201crearing, education.\u201d\n\n\n149. +Transliteration: the\u00f4ria. Definition \u201ca looking at ... observing\n... contemplation.\u201d\n\n\n154. +Transliteration: monochronos h\u00eadon\u00ea. Pater\u2019s definition \u201cthe\npleasure of the ideal present, of the mystic now.\u201d The definition is\nfitting; the unusual adjective monokhronos means, literally, \u201csingle or\nunitary time.\u201d\n\n\n155. +Horace, Ars Poetica 311. +Etext editor\u2019s translation: \u201cThe\nsubject once foreknown, the words will follow easily.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X.\nON THE WAY\n\n\nMirum est ut animus agitatione motuque corporis excitetur.\nPliny\u2019s Letters.\n\n\nMany points in that train of thought, its harder and more energetic\npractical details especially, at first surmised but vaguely in the\nintervals of his visits to the tomb of Flavian, attained the coherence\nof formal principle amid the stirring incidents of the journey, which\ntook him, still in all the buoyancy of his nineteen years and greatly\nexpectant, to Rome. That summons had come from one of the former\nfriends of his father in the capital, who had kept himself acquainted\nwith the lad\u2019s progress, and, assured of his parts, his courtly ways,\nabove all of his beautiful penmanship, now offered him a place,\nvirtually that of an amanuensis, near the person of the philosophic\nemperor. The old town-house of his family on the Caelian hill, so long\nneglected, might well require his personal care; and Marius, relieved a\nlittle by his preparations for travelling from a certain over-tension\nof spirit in which he had lived of late, was presently on his way, to\nawait introduction to Aurelius, on his expected return home, after a\nfirst success, illusive enough as it was soon to appear, against the\ninvaders from beyond the Danube.\n\nThe opening stage of his journey, through the firm, golden weather, for\nwhich he had lingered three days beyond the appointed time of\nstarting\u2014days brown with the first rains of autumn\u2014brought him, by the\nbyways among the lower slopes of the Apennines of Luna, to the town of\nLuca, a station on the Cassian Way; travelling so far mainly on foot,\nwhile the baggage followed under the care of his attendants. He wore a\nbroad felt hat, in fashion not unlike a more modern pilgrim\u2019s, the neat\nhead projecting from the collar of his gray paenula, or travelling\nmantle, sewed closely together over the breast, but with its two sides\nfolded up upon the shoulders, to leave the arms free in walking, and\nwas altogether so trim and fresh, that, as he climbed the hill from\nPisa, by the long steep lane through the olive-yards, and turned to\ngaze where he could just discern the cypresses of the old school\ngarden, like two black lines down the yellow walls, a little child took\npossession of his hand, and, looking up at him with entire confidence,\npaced on bravely at his side, for the mere pleasure of his company, to\nthe spot where the road declined again into the valley beyond. From\nthis point, leaving the servants behind, he surrendered himself, a\nwilling subject, as he walked, to the impressions of the road, and was\nalmost surprised, both at the suddenness with which evening came on,\nand the distance from his old home at which it found him.\n\nAnd at the little town of Luca, he felt that indescribable sense of a\nwelcoming in the mere outward appearance of things, which seems to mark\nout certain places for the special purpose of evening rest, and gives\nthem always a peculiar amiability in retrospect. Under the deepening\ntwilight, the rough-tiled roofs seem to huddle together side by side,\nlike one continuous shelter over the whole township, spread low and\nbroad above the snug sleeping-rooms within; and the place one sees for\nthe first time, and must tarry in but for a night, breathes the very\nspirit of home. The cottagers lingered at their doors for a few minutes\nas the shadows grew larger, and went to rest early; though there was\nstill a glow along the road through the shorn corn-fields, and the\nbirds were still awake about the crumbling gray heights of an old\ntemple. So quiet and air-swept was the place, you could hardly tell\nwhere the country left off in it, and the field-paths became its\nstreets. Next morning he must needs change the manner of his journey.\nThe light baggage-wagon returned, and he proceeded now more quickly,\ntravelling a stage or two by post, along the Cassian Way, where the\nfigures and incidents of the great high-road seemed already to tell of\nthe capital, the one centre to which all were hastening, or had lately\nbidden adieu. That Way lay through the heart of the old, mysterious and\nvisionary country of Etruria; and what he knew of its strange religion\nof the dead, reinforced by the actual sight of the funeral houses\nscattered so plentifully among the dwelling-places of the living,\nrevived in him for a while, in all its strength, his old instinctive\nyearning towards those inhabitants of the shadowy land he had known in\nlife. It seemed to him that he could half divine how time passed in\nthose painted houses on the hillsides, among the gold and silver\nornaments, the wrought armour and vestments, the drowsy and dead\nattendants; and the close consciousness of that vast population gave\nhim no fear, but rather a sense of companionship, as he climbed the\nhills on foot behind the horses, through the genial afternoon.\n\nThe road, next day, passed below a town not less primitive, it might\nseem, than its rocky perch\u2014white rocks, that had long been glistening\nbefore him in the distance. Down the dewy paths the people were\ndescending from it, to keep a holiday, high and low alike in rough,\nwhite-linen smocks. A homely old play was just begun in an open-air\ntheatre, with seats hollowed out of the turf-grown slope. Marius caught\nthe terrified expression of a child in its mother\u2019s arms, as it turned\nfrom the yawning mouth of a great mask, for refuge in her bosom. The\nway mounted, and descended again, down the steep street of another\nplace, all resounding with the noise of metal under the hammer; for\nevery house had its brazier\u2019s workshop, the bright objects of brass and\ncopper gleaming, like lights in a cave, out of their dark roofs and\ncorners. Around the anvils the children were watching the work, or ran\nto fetch water to the hissing, red-hot metal; and Marius too watched,\nas he took his hasty mid-day refreshment, a mess of chestnut-meal and\ncheese, while the swelling surface of a great copper water-vessel grew\nflowered all over with tiny petals under the skilful strokes. Towards\ndusk, a frantic woman at the roadside, stood and cried out the words of\nsome philter, or malison, in verse, with weird motion of her hands, as\nthe travellers passed, like a wild picture drawn from Virgil.\n\nBut all along, accompanying the superficial grace of these incidents of\nthe way, Marius noted, more and more as he drew nearer to Rome, marks\nof the great plague. Under Hadrian and his successors, there had been\nmany enactments to improve the condition of the slave. The ergastula+\nwere abolished. But no system of free labour had as yet succeeded. A\nwhole mendicant population, artfully exaggerating every symptom and\ncircumstance of misery, still hung around, or sheltered themselves\nwithin, the vast walls of their old, half-ruined task-houses. And for\nthe most part they had been variously stricken by the pestilence. For\nonce, the heroic level had been reached in rags, squints, scars\u2014every\ncaricature of the human type\u2014ravaged beyond what could have been\nthought possible if it were to survive at all. Meantime, the farms were\nless carefully tended than of old: here and there they were lapsing\ninto their natural wildness: some villas also were partly fallen into\nruin. The picturesque, romantic Italy of a later time\u2014the Italy of\nClaude and Salvator Rosa\u2014was already forming, for the delight of the\nmodern romantic traveller.\n\nAnd again Marius was aware of a real change in things, on crossing the\nTiber, as if some magic effect lay in that; though here, in truth, the\nTiber was but a modest enough stream of turbid water. Nature, under the\nricher sky, seemed readier and more affluent, and man fitter to the\nconditions around him: even in people hard at work there appeared to be\na less burdensome sense of the mere business of life. How dreamily the\nwomen were passing up through the broad light and shadow of the steep\nstreets with the great water-pots resting on their heads, like women of\nCaryae, set free from slavery in old Greek temples. With what a fresh,\nprimeval poetry was daily existence here impressed\u2014all the details of\nthe threshing-floor and the vineyard; the common farm-life even; the\ngreat bakers\u2019 fires aglow upon the road in the evening. In the presence\nof all this Marius felt for a moment like those old, early, unconscious\npoets, who created the famous Greek myths of Dionysus, and the Great\nMother, out of the imagery of the wine-press and the ploughshare. And\nstill the motion of the journey was bringing his thoughts to systematic\nform. He seemed to have grown to the fulness of intellectual manhood,\non his way hither. The formative and literary stimulus, so to call it,\nof peaceful exercise which he had always observed in himself, doing its\nutmost now, the form and the matter of thought alike detached\nthemselves clearly and with readiness from the healthfully excited\nbrain.\u2014\u201cIt is wonderful,\u201d says Pliny, \u201chow the mind is stirred to\nactivity by brisk bodily exercise.\u201d The presentable aspects of inmost\nthought and feeling became evident to him: the structure of all he\nmeant, its order and outline, defined itself: his general sense of a\nfitness and beauty in words became effective in daintily pliant\nsentences, with all sorts of felicitous linking of figure to\nabstraction. It seemed just then as if the desire of the artist in\nhim\u2014that old longing to produce\u2014might be satisfied by the exact and\nliteral transcript of what was then passing around him, in simple\nprose, arresting the desirable moment as it passed, and prolonging its\nlife a little.\u2014To live in the concrete! To be sure, at least, of one\u2019s\nhold upon that!\u2014Again, his philosophic scheme was but the reflection of\nthe data of sense, and chiefly of sight, a reduction to the abstract,\nof the brilliant road he travelled on, through the sunshine.\n\nBut on the seventh evening there came a reaction in the cheerful flow\nof our traveller\u2019s thoughts, a reaction with which mere bodily fatigue,\nasserting itself at last over his curiosity, had much to do; and he\nfell into a mood, known to all passably sentimental wayfarers, as night\ndeepens again and again over their path, in which all journeying, from\nthe known to the unknown, comes suddenly to figure as a mere foolish\ntruancy\u2014like a child\u2019s running away from home\u2014with the feeling that one\nhad best return at once, even through the darkness. He had chosen to\nclimb on foot, at his leisure, the long windings by which the road\nascended to the place where that day\u2019s stage was to end, and found\nhimself alone in the twilight, far behind the rest of his\ntravelling-companions. Would the last zigzag, round and round those\ndark masses, half natural rock, half artificial substructure, ever\nbring him within the circuit of the walls above? It was now that a\nstartling incident turned those misgivings almost into actual fear.\nFrom the steep slope a heavy mass of stone was detached, after some\nwhisperings among the trees above his head, and rushing down through\nthe stillness fell to pieces in a cloud of dust across the road just\nbehind him, so that he felt the touch upon his heel. That was\nsufficient, just then, to rouse out of its hiding-place his old vague\nfear of evil\u2014of one\u2019s \u201cenemies\u201d\u2014a distress, so much a matter of\nconstitution with him, that at times it would seem that the best\npleasures of life could but be snatched, as it were hastily, in one\nmoment\u2019s forgetfulness of its dark, besetting influence. A sudden\nsuspicion of hatred against him, of the nearness of \u201cenemies,\u201d seemed\nall at once to alter the visible form of things, as with the child\u2019s\nhero, when he found the footprint on the sand of his peaceful, dreamy\nisland. His elaborate philosophy had not put beneath his feet the\nterror of mere bodily evil; much less of \u201cinexorable fate, and the\nnoise of greedy Acheron.\u201d\n\nThe resting-place to which he presently came, in the keen, wholesome\nair of the market-place of the little hill-town, was a pleasant\ncontrast to that last effort of his journey. The room in which he sat\ndown to supper, unlike the ordinary Roman inns at that day, was trim\nand sweet. The firelight danced cheerfully upon the polished,\nthree-wicked lucernae burning cleanly with the best oil, upon the\nwhite-washed walls, and the bunches of scarlet carnations set in glass\ngoblets. The white wine of the place put before him, of the true colour\nand flavour of the grape, and with a ring of delicate foam as it\nmounted in the cup, had a reviving edge or freshness he had found in no\nother wine. These things had relieved a little the melancholy of the\nhour before; and it was just then that he heard the voice of one, newly\narrived at the inn, making his way to the upper floor\u2014a youthful voice,\nwith a reassuring clearness of note, which completed his cure.\n\nHe seemed to hear that voice again in dreams, uttering his name: then,\nawake in the full morning light and gazing from the window, saw the\nguest of the night before, a very honourable-looking youth, in the rich\nhabit of a military knight, standing beside his horse, and already\nmaking preparations to depart. It happened that Marius, too, was to\ntake that day\u2019s journey on horseback. Riding presently from the inn, he\novertook Cornelius\u2014of the Twelfth Legion\u2014advancing carefully down the\nsteep street; and before they had issued from the gates of Urbs-vetus,\nthe two young men had broken into talk together. They were passing\nalong the street of the goldsmiths; and Cornelius must needs enter one\nof the workshops for the repair of some button or link of his knightly\ntrappings. Standing in the doorway, Marius watched the work, as he had\nwatched the brazier\u2019s business a few days before, wondering most at the\nsimplicity of its processes, a simplicity, however, on which only\ngenius in that craft could have lighted.\u2014By what unguessed-at stroke of\nhand, for instance, had the grains of precious metal associated\nthemselves with so daintily regular a roughness, over the surface of\nthe little casket yonder? And the conversation which followed, hence\narising, left the two travellers with sufficient interest in each other\nto insure an easy companionship for the remainder of their journey. In\ntime to come, Marius was to depend very much on the preferences, the\npersonal judgments, of the comrade who now laid his hand so brotherly\non his shoulder, as they left the workshop.\n\nItineris matutini gratiam capimus,+\u2014observes one of our scholarly\ntravellers; and their road that day lay through a country, well-fitted,\nby the peculiarity of its landscape, to ripen a first acquaintance into\nintimacy; its superficial ugliness throwing the wayfarers back upon\neach other\u2019s entertainment in a real exchange of ideas, the tension of\nwhich, however, it would relieve, ever and anon, by the unexpected\nassertion of something singularly attractive. The immediate aspect of\nthe land was, indeed, in spite of abundant olive and ilex, unpleasing\nenough. A river of clay seemed, \u201cin some old night of time,\u201d to have\nburst up over valley and hill, and hardened there into fantastic\nshelves and slides and angles of cadaverous rock, up and down among the\ncontorted vegetation; the hoary roots and trunks seeming to confess\nsome weird kinship with them. But that was long ago; and these pallid\nhillsides needed only the declining sun, touching the rock with purple,\nand throwing deeper shadow into the immemorial foliage, to put on a\npeculiar, because a very grave and austere, kind of beauty; while the\ngraceful outlines common to volcanic hills asserted themselves in the\nbroader prospect. And, for sentimental Marius, all this was associated,\nby some perhaps fantastic affinity, with a peculiar trait of severity,\nbeyond his guesses as to the secret of it, which mingled with the\nblitheness of his new companion. Concurring, indeed, with the condition\nof a Roman soldier, it was certainly something far more than the\nexpression of military hardness, or asc\u00easis; and what was earnest, or\neven austere, in the landscape they had traversed together, seemed to\nhave been waiting for the passage of this figure to interpret or inform\nit. Again, as in his early days with Flavian, a vivid personal presence\nbroke through the dreamy idealism, which had almost come to doubt of\nother men\u2019s reality: reassuringly, indeed, yet not without some sense\nof a constraining tyranny over him from without.\n\nFor Cornelius, returning from the campaign, to take up his quarters on\nthe Palatine, in the imperial guard, seemed to carry about with him, in\nthat privileged world of comely usage to which he belonged, the\natmosphere of some still more jealously exclusive circle. They halted\non the morrow at noon, not at an inn, but at the house of one of the\nyoung soldier\u2019s friends, whom they found absent, indeed, in consequence\nof the plague in those parts, so that after a mid-day rest only, they\nproceeded again on their journey. The great room of the villa, to which\nthey were admitted, had lain long untouched; and the dust rose, as they\nentered, into the slanting bars of sunlight, that fell through the\nhalf-closed shutters. It was here, to while away the time, that\nCornelius bethought himself of displaying to his new friend the various\narticles and ornaments of his knightly array\u2014the breastplate, the\nsandals and cuirass, lacing them on, one by one, with the assistance of\nMarius, and finally the great golden bracelet on the right arm,\nconferred on him by his general for an act of valour. And as he gleamed\nthere, amid that odd interchange of light and shade, with the staff of\na silken standard firm in his hand, Marius felt as if he were face to\nface, for the first time, with some new knighthood or chivalry, just\nthen coming into the world.\n\nIt was soon after they left this place, journeying now by carriage,\nthat Rome was seen at last, with much excitement on the part of our\ntravellers; Cornelius, and some others of whom the party then\nconsisted, agreeing, chiefly for the sake of Marius, to hasten forward,\nthat it might be reached by daylight, with a cheerful noise of rapid\nwheels as they passed over the flagstones. But the highest light upon\nthe mausoleum of Hadrian was quite gone out, and it was dark, before\nthey reached the Flaminian Gate. The abundant sound of water was the\none thing that impressed Marius, as they passed down a long street,\nwith many open spaces on either hand: Cornelius to his military\nquarters, and Marius to the old dwelling-place of his fathers.\n\nNOTES\n\n\n162. +E-text editor\u2019s note: ergastula were the Roman agrarian\nequivalent of prison-workhouses.\n\n\n168. +Apuleius, The Golden Ass, I.17.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI.\n\u201cTHE MOST RELIGIOUS CITY IN THE WORLD\u201d\n\n\nMarius awoke early and passed curiously from room to room, noting for\nmore careful inspection by and by the rolls of manuscripts. Even\ngreater than his curiosity in gazing for the first time on this ancient\npossession, was his eagerness to look out upon Rome itself, as he\npushed back curtain and shutter, and stepped forth in the fresh morning\nupon one of the many balconies, with an oft-repeated dream realised at\nlast. He was certainly fortunate in the time of his coming to Rome.\nThat old pagan world, of which Rome was the flower, had reached its\nperfection in the things of poetry and art\u2014a perfection which indicated\nonly too surely the eve of decline. As in some vast intellectual\nmuseum, all its manifold products were intact and in their places, and\nwith custodians also still extant, duly qualified to appreciate and\nexplain them. And at no period of history had the material Rome itself\nbeen better worth seeing\u2014lying there not less consummate than that\nworld of pagan intellect which it represented in every phase of its\ndarkness and light. The various work of many ages fell here\nharmoniously together, as yet untouched save by time, adding the final\ngrace of a rich softness to its complex expression. Much which spoke of\nages earlier than Nero, the great re-builder, lingered on, antique,\nquaint, immeasurably venerable, like the relics of the medieval city in\nthe Paris of Lewis the Fourteenth: the work of Nero\u2019s own time had come\nto have that sort of old world and picturesque interest which the work\nof Lewis has for ourselves; while without stretching a parallel too far\nwe might perhaps liken the architectural finesses of the archaic\nHadrian to the more excellent products of our own Gothic revival. The\ntemple of Antoninus and Faustina was still fresh in all the majesty of\nits closely arrayed columns of cipollino; but, on the whole, little had\nbeen added under the late and present emperors, and during fifty years\nof public quiet, a sober brown and gray had grown apace on things. The\ngilding on the roof of many a temple had lost its garishness: cornice\nand capital of polished marble shone out with all the crisp freshness\nof real flowers, amid the already mouldering travertine and brickwork,\nthough the birds had built freely among them. What Marius then saw was\nin many respects, after all deduction of difference, more like the\nmodern Rome than the enumeration of particular losses might lead us to\nsuppose; the Renaissance, in its most ambitious mood and with amplest\nresources, having resumed the ancient classical tradition there, with\nno break or obstruction, as it had happened, in any very considerable\nwork of the middle age. Immediately before him, on the square, steep\nheight, where the earliest little old Rome had huddled itself together,\narose the palace of the Caesars. Half-veiling the vast substruction of\nrough, brown stone\u2014line upon line of successive ages of builders\u2014the\ntrim, old-fashioned garden walks, under their closely-woven walls of\ndark glossy foliage, test of long and careful cultivation, wound\ngradually, among choice trees, statues and fountains, distinct and\nsparkling in the full morning sunlight, to the richly tinted mass of\npavilions and corridors above, centering in the lofty, white-marble\ndwelling-place of Apollo himself.\n\nHow often had Marius looked forward to that first, free wandering\nthrough Rome, to which he now went forth with a heat in the town\nsunshine (like a mist of fine gold-dust spread through the air) to the\nheight of his desire, making the dun coolness of the narrow streets\nwelcome enough at intervals. He almost feared, descending the stair\nhastily, lest some unforeseen accident should snatch the little cup of\nenjoyment from him ere he passed the door. In such morning rambles in\nplaces new to him, life had always seemed to come at its fullest: it\nwas then he could feel his youth, that youth the days of which he had\nalready begun to count jealously, in entire possession. So the grave,\npensive figure, a figure, be it said nevertheless, fresher far than\noften came across it now, moved through the old city towards the\nlodgings of Cornelius, certainly not by the most direct course, however\neager to rejoin the friend of yesterday.\n\nBent as keenly on seeing as if his first day in Rome were to be also\nhis last, the two friends descended along the _Vicus Tuscus_, with its\nrows of incense-stalls, into the _Via Nova_, where the fashionable\npeople were busy shopping; and Marius saw with much amusement the\nfrizzled heads, then _\u00e0 la mode_. A glimpse of the _Marmorata_, the\nhaven at the river-side, where specimens of all the precious marbles of\nthe world were lying amid great white blocks from the quarries of Luna,\ntook his thoughts for a moment to his distant home. They visited the\nflower-market, lingering where the _coronarii_ pressed on them the\nnewest species, and purchased zinias, now in blossom (like painted\nflowers, thought Marius), to decorate the folds of their togas.\nLoitering to the other side of the Forum, past the great Galen\u2019s\ndrug-shop, after a glance at the announcements of new poems on sale\nattached to the doorpost of a famous bookseller, they entered the\ncurious library of the Temple of Peace, then a favourite resort of\nliterary men, and read, fixed there for all to see, the _Diurnal_ or\nGazette of the day, which announced, together with births and deaths,\nprodigies and accidents, and much mere matter of business, the date and\nmanner of the philosophic emperor\u2019s joyful return to his people; and,\nthereafter, with eminent names faintly disguised, what would carry that\nday\u2019s news, in many copies, over the provinces\u2014a certain matter\nconcerning the great lady, known to be dear to him, whom he had left at\nhome. It was a story, with the development of which \u201csociety\u201d had\nindeed for some time past edified or amused itself, rallying\nsufficiently from the panic of a year ago, not only to welcome back its\nruler, but also to relish a _chronique scandaleuse;_ and thus, when\nsoon after Marius saw the world\u2019s wonder, he was already acquainted\nwith the suspicions which have ever since hung about her name. Twelve\no\u2019clock was come before they left the Forum, waiting in a little crowd\nto hear the _Accensus_, according to old custom, proclaim the hour of\nnoonday, at the moment when, from the steps of the Senate-house, the\nsun could be seen standing between the _Rostra_ and the _Gr\u00e6costasis_.\nHe exerted for this function a strength of voice, which confirmed in\nMarius a judgment the modern visitor may share with him, that Roman\nthroats and Roman chests, namely, must, in some peculiar way, be\ndifferently constructed from those of other people. Such judgment\nindeed he had formed in part the evening before, noting, as a religious\nprocession passed him, how much noise a man and a boy could make,\nthough not without a great deal of real music, of which in truth the\nRomans were then as ever passionately fond.\n\nHence the two friends took their way through the Via Flaminia, almost\nalong the line of the modern Corso, already bordered with handsome\nvillas, turning presently to the left, into the Field-of-Mars, still\nthe playground of Rome. But the vast public edifices were grown to be\nalmost continuous over the grassy expanse, represented now only by\noccasional open spaces of verdure and wild-flowers. In one of these a\ncrowd was standing, to watch a party of athletes stripped for exercise.\nMarius had been surprised at the luxurious variety of the litters borne\nthrough Rome, where no carriage horses were allowed; and just then one\nfar more sumptuous than the rest, with dainty appointments of ivory and\ngold, was carried by, all the town pressing with eagerness to get a\nglimpse of its most beautiful woman, as she passed rapidly. Yes! there,\nwas the wonder of the world\u2014the empress Faustina herself: Marius could\ndistinguish, could distinguish clearly, the well-known profile, between\nthe floating purple curtains.\n\nFor indeed all Rome was ready to burst into gaiety again, as it awaited\nwith much real affection, hopeful and animated, the return of its\nemperor, for whose ovation various adornments were preparing along the\nstreets through which the imperial procession would pass. He had left\nRome just twelve months before, amid immense gloom. The alarm of a\nbarbarian insurrection along the whole line of the Danube had happened\nat the moment when Rome was panic-stricken by the great pestilence.\n\nIn fifty years of peace, broken only by that conflict in the East from\nwhich Lucius Verus, among other curiosities, brought back the plague,\nwar had come to seem a merely romantic, superannuated incident of\nbygone history. And now it was almost upon Italian soil. Terrible were\nthe reports of the numbers and audacity of the assailants. Aurelius, as\nyet untried in war, and understood by a few only in the whole scope of\na really great character, was known to the majority of his subjects as\nbut a careful administrator, though a student of philosophy, perhaps,\nas we say, a dilettante. But he was also the visible centre of\ngovernment, towards whom the hearts of a whole people turned, grateful\nfor fifty years of public happiness\u2014its good genius, its\n\u201cAntonine\u201d\u2014whose fragile person might be foreseen speedily giving way\nunder the trials of military life, with a disaster like that of the\nslaughter of the legions by Arminius. Prophecies of the world\u2019s\nimpending conflagration were easily credited: \u201cthe secular fire\u201d would\ndescend from heaven: superstitious fear had even demanded the sacrifice\nof a human victim.\n\nMarcus Aurelius, always philosophically considerate of the humours of\nother people, exercising also that devout appreciation of every\nreligious claim which was one of his characteristic habits, had\ninvoked, in aid of the commonwealth, not only all native gods, but all\nforeign deities as well, however strange.\u2014\u201cHelp! Help! in the ocean\nspace!\u201d A multitude of foreign priests had been welcomed to Rome, with\ntheir various peculiar religious rites. The sacrifices made on this\noccasion were remembered for centuries; and the starving poor, at\nleast, found some satisfaction in the flesh of those herds of \u201cwhite\nbulls,\u201d which came into the city, day after day, to yield the savour of\ntheir blood to the gods.\n\nIn spite of all this, the legions had but followed their standards\ndespondently. But prestige, personal prestige, the name of \u201cEmperor,\u201d\nstill had its magic power over the nations. The mere approach of the\nRoman army made an impression on the barbarians. Aurelius and his\ncolleague had scarcely reached Aquileia when a deputation arrived to\nask for peace. And now the two imperial \u201cbrothers\u201d were returning home\nat leisure; were waiting, indeed, at a villa outside the walls, till\nthe capital had made ready to receive them. But although Rome was thus\nin genial reaction, with much relief, and hopefulness against the\nwinter, facing itself industriously in damask of red and gold, those\ntwo enemies were still unmistakably extant: the barbarian army of the\nDanube was but over-awed for a season; and the plague, as we saw when\nMarius was on his way to Rome, was not to depart till it had done a\nlarge part in the formation of the melancholy picturesque of modern\nItaly\u2014till it had made, or prepared for the making of the Roman\nCampagna. The old, unaffected, really pagan, peace or gaiety, of\nAntoninus Pius\u2014that genuine though unconscious humanist\u2014was gone for\never. And again and again, throughout this day of varied observation,\nMarius had been reminded, above all else, that he was not merely in\n\u201cthe most religious city of the world,\u201d as one had said, but that Rome\nwas become the romantic home of the wildest superstition. Such\nsuperstition presented itself almost as religious mania in many an\nincident of his long ramble,\u2014incidents to which he gave his full\nattention, though contending in some measure with a reluctance on the\npart of his companion, the motive of which he did not understand till\nlong afterwards. Marius certainly did not allow this reluctance to\ndeter his own curiosity. Had he not come to Rome partly under poetic\nvocation, to receive all those things, the very impress of life itself,\nupon the visual, the imaginative, organ, as upon a mirror; to reflect\nthem; to transmute them into golden words? He must observe that strange\nmedley of superstition, that centuries\u2019 growth, layer upon layer, of\nthe curiosities of religion (one faith jostling another out of place)\nat least for its picturesque interest, and as an indifferent outsider\nmight, not too deeply concerned in the question which, if any of them,\nwas to be the survivor.\n\nSuperficially, at least, the Roman religion, allying itself with much\ndiplomatic economy to possible rivals, was in possession, as a vast and\ncomplex system of usage, intertwining itself with every detail of\npublic and private life, attractively enough for those who had but \u201cthe\nhistoric temper,\u201d and a taste for the past, however much a Lucian might\ndepreciate it. Roman religion, as Marius knew, had, indeed, been always\nsomething to be done, rather than something to be thought, or believed,\nor loved; something to be done in minutely detailed manner, at a\nparticular time and place, correctness in which had long been a matter\nof laborious learning with a whole school of ritualists\u2014as also, now\nand again, a matter of heroic sacrifice with certain exceptionally\ndevout souls, as when Caius Fabius Dorso, with his life in his hand,\nsucceeded in passing the sentinels of the invading Gauls to perform a\nsacrifice on the Quirinal, and, thanks to the divine protection, had\nreturned in safety. So jealous was the distinction between sacred and\nprofane, that, in the matter of the \u201cregarding of days,\u201d it had made\nmore than half the year a holiday. Aurelius had, indeed, ordained that\nthere should be no more than a hundred and thirty-five festival days in\nthe year; but in other respects he had followed in the steps of his\npredecessor, Antoninus Pius\u2014commended especially for his \u201creligion,\u201d\nhis conspicuous devotion to its public ceremonies\u2014and whose coins are\nremarkable for their reference to the oldest and most hieratic types of\nRoman mythology. Aurelius had succeeded in more than healing the old\nfeud between philosophy and religion, displaying himself, in singular\ncombination, as at once the most zealous of philosophers and the most\ndevout of polytheists, and lending himself, with an air of conviction,\nto all the pageantries of public worship. To his pious recognition of\nthat one orderly spirit, which, according to the doctrine of the\nStoics, diffuses itself through the world, and animates it\u2014a\nrecognition taking the form, with him, of a constant effort towards\ninward likeness thereto, in the harmonious order of his own soul\u2014he had\nadded a warm personal devotion towards the whole multitude of the old\nnational gods, and a great many new foreign ones besides, by him, at\nleast, not ignobly conceived. If the comparison may be reverently made,\nthere was something here of the method by which the catholic church has\nadded the cultus of the saints to its worship of the one Divine Being.\n\nAnd to the view of the majority, though the emperor, as the personal\ncentre of religion, entertained the hope of converting his people to\nphilosophic faith, and had even pronounced certain public discourses\nfor their instruction in it, that polytheistic devotion was his most\nstriking feature. Philosophers, indeed, had, for the most part, thought\nwith Seneca, \u201cthat a man need not lift his hands to heaven, nor ask the\nsacristan\u2019s leave to put his mouth to the ear of an image, that his\nprayers might be heard the better.\u201d\u2014Marcus Aurelius, \u201ca master in\nIsrael,\u201d knew all that well enough. Yet his outward devotion was much\nmore than a concession to popular sentiment, or a mere result of that\nsense of fellow-citizenship with others, which had made him again and\nagain, under most difficult circumstances, an excellent comrade. Those\nothers, too!\u2014amid all their ignorances, what were they but instruments\nin the administration of the Divine Reason, \u201cfrom end to end sweetly\nand strongly disposing all things\u201d? Meantime \u201cPhilosophy\u201d itself had\nassumed much of what we conceive to be the religious character. It had\neven cultivated the habit, the power, of \u201cspiritual direction\u201d; the\ntroubled soul making recourse in its hour of destitution, or amid the\ndistractions of the world, to this or that director\u2014philosopho suo\u2014who\ncould really best understand it.\n\nAnd it had been in vain that the old, grave and discreet religion of\nRome had set itself, according to its proper genius, to prevent or\nsubdue all trouble and disturbance in men\u2019s souls. In religion, as in\nother matters, plebeians, as such, had a taste for movement, for\nrevolution; and it had been ever in the most populous quarters that\nreligious changes began. To the apparatus of foreign religion, above\nall, recourse had been made in times of public disquietude or sudden\nterror; and in those great religious celebrations, before his\nproceeding against the barbarians, Aurelius had even restored the\nsolemnities of Isis, prohibited in the capital since the time of\nAugustus, making no secret of his worship of that goddess, though her\ntemple had been actually destroyed by authority in the reign of\nTiberius. Her singular and in many ways beautiful ritual was now\npopular in Rome. And then\u2014what the enthusiasm of the swarming plebeian\nquarters had initiated, was sure to be adopted, sooner or later, by\nwomen of fashion. A blending of all the religions of the ancient world\nhad been accomplished. The new gods had arrived, had been welcomed, and\nfound their places; though, certainly, with no real security, in any\nadequate ideal of the divine nature itself in the background of men\u2019s\nminds, that the presence of the new-comer should be edifying, or even\nrefining. High and low addressed themselves to all deities alike\nwithout scruple; confusing them together when they prayed, and in the\nold, authorised, threefold veneration of their visible images, by\nflowers, incense, and ceremonial lights\u2014those beautiful usages, which\nthe church, in her way through the world, ever making spoil of the\nworld\u2019s goods for the better uses of the human spirit, took up and\nsanctified in her service.\n\nAnd certainly \u201cthe most religious city in the world\u201d took no care to\nveil its devotion, however fantastic. The humblest house had its little\nchapel or shrine, its image and lamp; while almost every one seemed to\nexercise some religious function and responsibility. Colleges, composed\nfor the most part of slaves and of the poor, provided for the service\nof the Compitalian Lares\u2014the gods who presided, respectively, over the\nseveral quarters of the city. In one street, Marius witnessed an\nincident of the festival of the patron deity of that neighbourhood, the\nway being strewn with box, the houses tricked out gaily in such poor\nfinery as they possessed, while the ancient idol was borne through it\nin procession, arrayed in gaudy attire the worse for wear. Numerous\nreligious clubs had their stated anniversaries, on which the members\nissued with much ceremony from their guild-hall, or schola, and\ntraversed the thoroughfares of Rome, preceded, like the confraternities\nof the present day, by their sacred banners, to offer sacrifice before\nsome famous image. Black with the perpetual smoke of lamps and incense,\noftenest old and ugly, perhaps on that account the more likely to\nlisten to the desires of the suffering\u2014had not those sacred effigies\nsometimes given sensible tokens that they were aware? The image of the\nFortune of Women\u2014Fortuna Muliebris, in the Latin Way, had spoken (not\nonce only) and declared; Bene me, Matronae! vidistis riteque\ndedicastis! The Apollo of Cumae had wept during three whole nights and\ndays. The images in the temple of Juno Sospita had been seen to sweat.\nNay! there was blood\u2014divine blood\u2014in the hearts of some of them: the\nimages in the Grove of Feronia had sweated blood!\n\nFrom one and all Cornelius had turned away: like the \u201catheist\u201d of whom\nApuleius tells he had never once raised hand to lip in passing image or\nsanctuary, and had parted from Marius finally when the latter\ndetermined to enter the crowded doorway of a temple, on their return\ninto the Forum, below the Palatine hill, where the mothers were\npressing in, with a multitude of every sort of children, to touch the\nlightning-struck image of the wolf-nurse of Romulus\u2014so tender to little\nones!\u2014just discernible in its dark shrine, amid a blaze of lights.\nMarius gazed after his companion of the day, as he mounted the steps to\nhis lodging, singing to himself, as it seemed. Marius failed precisely\nto catch the words.\n\nAnd, as the rich, fresh evening came on, there was heard all over Rome,\nfar above a whisper, the whole town seeming hushed to catch it\ndistinctly, the lively, reckless call to \u201cplay,\u201d from the sons and\ndaughters of foolishness, to those in whom their life was still\ngreen\u2014Donec virenti canities abest!\u2014Donec virenti canities abest!+\nMarius could hardly doubt how Cornelius would have taken the call. And\nas for himself, slight as was the burden of positive moral obligation\nwith which he had entered Rome, it was to no wasteful and vagrant\naffections, such as these, that his Epicureanism had committed him.\n\nNOTES\n\n\n187. +Horace, Odes I.ix.17. Translation: \u201cSo long as youth is fresh and\nage is far away.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII.\nTHE DIVINITY THAT DOTH HEDGE A KING\n\n\nBut ah! Maecenas is yclad in claye,\nAnd great Augustus long ygoe is dead,\nAnd all the worthies liggen wrapt in lead,\nThat matter made for poets on to playe.+\n\n\nMarcus Aurelius who, though he had little relish for them himself, had\never been willing to humour the taste of his people for magnificent\nspectacles, was received back to Rome with the lesser honours of the\nOvation, conceded by the Senate (so great was the public sense of\ndeliverance) with even more than the laxity which had become its habit\nunder imperial rule, for there had been no actual bloodshed in the late\nachievement. Clad in the civic dress of the chief Roman magistrate, and\nwith a crown of myrtle upon his head, his colleague similarly attired\nwalking beside him, he passed up to the Capitol on foot, though in\nsolemn procession along the Sacred Way, to offer sacrifice to the\nnational gods. The victim, a goodly sheep, whose image we may still see\nbetween the pig and the ox of the Suovetaurilia, filleted and stoled\nalmost like some ancient canon of the church, on a sculptured fragment\nin the Forum, was conducted by the priests, clad in rich white\nvestments, and bearing their sacred utensils of massive gold,\nimmediately behind a company of flute-players, led by the great\nchoir-master, or conductor, of the day, visibly tetchy or delighted,\naccording as the instruments he ruled with his tuning-rod, rose, more\nor less adequately amid the difficulties of the way, to the dream of\nperfect music in the soul within him. The vast crowd, including the\nsoldiers of the triumphant army, now restored to wives and children,\nall alike in holiday whiteness, had left their houses early in the\nfine, dry morning, in a real affection for \u201cthe father of his country,\u201d\nto await the procession, the two princes having spent the preceding\nnight outside the walls, at the old Villa of the Republic. Marius, full\nof curiosity, had taken his position with much care; and stood to see\nthe world\u2019s masters pass by, at an angle from which he could command\nthe view of a great part of the processional route, sprinkled with fine\nyellow sand, and punctiliously guarded from profane footsteps.\n\nThe coming of the pageant was announced by the clear sound of the\nflutes, heard at length above the acclamations of the people\u2014Salve\nImperator!\u2014Dii te servent!\u2014shouted in regular time, over the hills. It\nwas on the central figure, of course, that the whole attention of\nMarius was fixed from the moment when the procession came in sight,\npreceded by the lictors with gilded fasces, the imperial image-bearers,\nand the pages carrying lighted torches; a band of knights, among whom\nwas Cornelius in complete military, array, following. Amply swathed\nabout in the folds of a richly worked toga, after a manner now long\nsince become obsolete with meaner persons, Marius beheld a man of about\nfive-and-forty years of age, with prominent eyes\u2014eyes, which although\ndemurely downcast during this essentially religious ceremony, were by\nnature broadly and benignantly observant. He was still, in the main, as\nwe see him in the busts which represent his gracious and courtly youth,\nwhen Hadrian had playfully called him, not Verus, after the name of his\nfather, but Verissimus, for his candour of gaze, and the bland capacity\nof the brow, which, below the brown hair, clustering thickly as of old,\nshone out low, broad, and clear, and still without a trace of the\ntrouble of his lips. You saw the brow of one who, amid the blindness or\nperplexity of the people about him, understood all things clearly; the\ndilemma, to which his experience so far had brought him, between Chance\nwith meek resignation, and a Providence with boundless possibilities\nand hope, being for him at least distinctly defined.\n\nThat outward serenity, which he valued so highly as a point of manner\nor expression not unworthy the care of a public minister\u2014outward\nsymbol, it might be thought, of the inward religious serenity it had\nbeen his constant purpose to maintain\u2014was increased to-day by his sense\nof the gratitude of his people; that his life had been one of such\ngifts and blessings as made his person seem in very deed divine to\nthem. Yet the cloud of some reserved internal sorrow, passing from time\nto time into an expression of fatigue and effort, of loneliness amid\nthe shouting multitude, might have been detected there by the more\nobservant\u2014as if the sagacious hint of one of his officers, \u201cThe\nsoldiers can\u2019t understand you, they don\u2019t know Greek,\u201d were applicable\nalways to his relationships with other people. The nostrils and mouth\nseemed capable almost of peevishness; and Marius noted in them, as in\nthe hands, and in the spare body generally, what was new to his\nexperience\u2014something of asceticism, as we say, of a bodily gymnastic,\nby which, although it told pleasantly in the clear blue humours of the\neye, the flesh had scarcely been an equal gainer with the spirit. It\nwas hardly the expression of \u201cthe healthy mind in the healthy body,\u201d\nbut rather of a sacrifice of the body to the soul, its needs and\naspirations, that Marius seemed to divine in this assiduous student of\nthe Greek sages\u2014a sacrifice, in truth, far beyond the demands of their\nvery saddest philosophy of life.\n\nDignify thyself with modesty and simplicity for thine ornaments!\u2014had\nbeen ever a maxim with this dainty and high-bred Stoic, who still\nthought manners a true part of morals, according to the old sense of\nthe term, and who regrets now and again that he cannot control his\nthoughts equally well with his countenance. That outward composure was\ndeepened during the solemnities of this day by an air of pontifical\nabstraction; which, though very far from being pride\u2014nay, a sort of\nhumility rather\u2014yet gave, to himself, an air of unapproachableness, and\nto his whole proceeding, in which every minutest act was considered,\nthe character of a ritual. Certainly, there was no haughtiness, social,\nmoral, or even philosophic, in Aurelius, who had realised, under more\ntrying conditions perhaps than any one before, that no element of\nhumanity could be alien from him. Yet, as he walked to-day, the centre\nof ten thousand observers, with eyes discreetly fixed on the ground,\nveiling his head at times and muttering very rapidly the words of the\n\u201csupplications,\u201d there was something many spectators may have noted as\na thing new in their experience, for Aurelius, unlike his predecessors,\ntook all this with absolute seriousness. The doctrine of the sanctity\nof kings, that, in the words of Tacitus, Princes are as Gods\u2014Principes\ninstar deorum esse\u2014seemed to have taken a novel, because a literal,\nsense. For Aurelius, indeed, the old legend of his descent from Numa,\nfrom Numa who had talked with the gods, meant much. Attached in very\nearly years to the service of the altars, like many another noble\nyouth, he was \u201cobserved to perform all his sacerdotal functions with a\nconstancy and exactness unusual at that age; was soon a master of the\nsacred music; and had all the forms and ceremonies by heart.\u201d And now,\nas the emperor, who had not only a vague divinity about his person, but\nwas actually the chief religious functionary of the state, recited from\ntime to time the forms of invocation, he needed not the help of the\nprompter, or ceremoniarius, who then approached, to assist him by\nwhispering the appointed words in his ear. It was that pontifical\nabstraction which then impressed itself on Marius as the leading\noutward characteristic of Aurelius; though to him alone, perhaps, in\nthat vast crowd of observers, it was no strange thing, but a matter he\nhad understood from of old.\n\nSome fanciful writers have assigned the origin of these triumphal\nprocessions to the mythic pomps of Dionysus, after his conquests in the\nEast; the very word Triumph being, according to this supposition, only\nThriambos-the Dionysiac Hymn. And certainly the younger of the two\nimperial \u201cbrothers,\u201d who, with the effect of a strong contrast, walked\nbeside Aurelius, and shared the honours of the day, might well have\nreminded people of the delicate Greek god of flowers and wine. This new\nconqueror of the East was now about thirty-six years old, but with his\nscrupulous care for all the advantages of his person, and a soft\ncurling beard powdered with gold, looked many years younger. One result\nof the more genial element in the wisdom of Aurelius had been that,\namid most difficult circumstances, he had known throughout life how to\nact in union with persons of character very alien from his own; to be\nmore than loyal to the colleague, the younger brother in empire, he had\ntoo lightly taken to himself, five years before, then an uncorrupt\nyouth, \u201cskilled in manly exercises and fitted for war.\u201d When Aurelius\nthanks the gods that a brother had fallen to his lot, whose character\nwas a stimulus to the proper care of his own, one sees that this could\nonly have happened in the way of an example, putting him on his guard\nagainst insidious faults. But it is with sincere amiability that the\nimperial writer, who was indeed little used to be ironical, adds that\nthe lively respect and affection of the junior had often \u201cgladdened\u201d\nhim. To be able to make his use of the flower, when the fruit perhaps\nwas useless or poisonous:\u2014that was one of the practical successes of\nhis philosophy; and his people noted, with a blessing, \u201cthe concord of\nthe two Augusti.\u201d\n\nThe younger, certainly, possessed in full measure that charm of a\nconstitutional freshness of aspect which may defy for a long time\nextravagant or erring habits of life; a physiognomy, healthy-looking,\ncleanly, and firm, which seemed unassociable with any form of\nself-torment, and made one think of the muzzle of some young hound or\nroe, such as human beings invariably like to stroke\u2014a physiognomy, in\neffect, with all the goodliness of animalism of the finer sort, though\nstill wholly animal. The charm was that of the blond head, the\nunshrinking gaze, the warm tints: neither more nor less than one may\nsee every English summer, in youth, manly enough, and with the stuff\nwhich makes brave soldiers, in spite of the natural kinship it seems to\nhave with playthings and gay flowers. But innate in Lucius Verus there\nwas that more than womanly fondness for fond things, which had made the\natmosphere of the old city of Antioch, heavy with centuries of\nvoluptuousness, a poison to him: he had come to love his delicacies\nbest out of season, and would have gilded the very flowers. But with a\nwonderful power of self-obliteration, the elder brother at the capital\nhad directed his procedure successfully, and allowed him, become now\nalso the husband of his daughter Lucilla, the credit of a \u201cConquest,\u201d\nthough Verus had certainly not returned a conqueror over himself. He\nhad returned, as we know, with the plague in his company, along with\nmany another strange creature of his folly; and when the people saw him\npublicly feeding his favourite horse Fleet with almonds and sweet\ngrapes, wearing the animal\u2019s image in gold, and finally building it a\ntomb, they felt, with some un-sentimental misgiving, that he might\nrevive the manners of Nero.\u2014What if, in the chances of war, he should\nsurvive the protecting genius of that elder brother?\n\nHe was all himself to-day: and it was with much wistful curiosity that\nMarius regarded him. For Lucius Verus was, indeed, but the highly\nexpressive type of a class,\u2014the true son of his father, adopted by\nHadrian. Lucius Verus the elder, also, had had the like strange\ncapacity for misusing the adornments of life, with a masterly grace; as\nif such misusing were, in truth, the quite adequate occupation of an\nintelligence, powerful, but distorted by cynical philosophy or some\ndisappointment of the heart. It was almost a sort of genius, of which\nthere had been instances in the imperial purple: it was to ascend the\nthrone, a few years later, in the person of one, now a hopeful little\nlad at home in the palace; and it had its following, of course, among\nthe wealthy youth at Rome, who concentrated no inconsiderable force of\nshrewdness and tact upon minute details of attire and manner, as upon\nthe one thing needful. Certainly, flowers were pleasant to the eye.\nSuch things had even their sober use, as making the outside of human\nlife superficially attractive, and thereby promoting the first steps\ntowards friendship and social amity. But what precise place could there\nbe for Verus and his peculiar charm, in that Wisdom, that Order of\ndivine Reason \u201creaching from end to end, strongly and sweetly disposing\nall things,\u201d from the vision of which Aurelius came down, so tolerant\nof persons like him? Into such vision Marius too was certainly\nwell-fitted to enter, yet, noting the actual perfection of Lucius Verus\nafter his kind, his undeniable achievement of the select, in all minor\nthings, felt, though with some suspicion of himself, that he entered\ninto, and could understand, this other so dubious sort of character\nalso. There was a voice in the theory he had brought to Rome with him\nwhich whispered \u201cnothing is either great nor small;\u201d as there were\ntimes when he could have thought that, as the \u201cgrammarian\u2019s\u201d or the\nartist\u2019s ardour of soul may be satisfied by the perfecting of the\ntheory of a sentence, or the adjustment of two colours, so his own life\nalso might have been fulfilled by an enthusiastic quest after\nperfection\u2014say, in the flowering and folding of a toga.\n\nThe emperors had burned incense before the image of Jupiter, arrayed in\nits most gorgeous apparel, amid sudden shouts from the people of Salve\nImperator! turned now from the living princes to the deity, as they\ndiscerned his countenance through the great open doors. The imperial\nbrothers had deposited their crowns of myrtle on the richly embroidered\nlapcloth of the god; and, with their chosen guests, sat down to a\npublic feast in the temple itself. There followed what was, after all,\nthe great event of the day:\u2014an appropriate discourse, a discourse\nalmost wholly de contemptu mundi, delivered in the presence of the\nassembled Senate, by the emperor Aurelius, who had thus, on certain\nrare occasions, condescended to instruct his people, with the double\nauthority of a chief pontiff and a laborious student of philosophy. In\nthose lesser honours of the ovation, there had been no attendant slave\nbehind the emperors, to make mock of their effulgence as they went; and\nit was as if with the discretion proper to a philosopher, and in fear\nof a jealous Nemesis, he had determined himself to protest in time\nagainst the vanity of all outward success.\n\nThe Senate was assembled to hear the emperor\u2019s discourse in the vast\nhall of the Curia Julia. A crowd of high-bred youths idled around, or\non the steps before the doors, with the marvellous toilets Marius had\nnoticed in the Via Nova; in attendance, as usual, to learn by\nobservation the minute points of senatorial procedure. Marius had\nalready some acquaintance with them, and passing on found himself\nsuddenly in the presence of what was still the most august assembly the\nworld had seen. Under Aurelius, ever full of veneration for this\nancient traditional guardian of public religion, the Senate had\nrecovered all its old dignity and independence. Among its members many\nhundreds in number, visibly the most distinguished of them all, Marius\nnoted the great sophists or rhetoricians of the day, in all their\nmagnificence. The antique character of their attire, and the ancient\nmode of wearing it, still surviving with them, added to the imposing\ncharacter of their persons, while they sat, with their staves of ivory\nin their hands, on their curule chairs\u2014almost the exact pattern of the\nchair still in use in the Roman church when a Bishop pontificates at\nthe divine offices\u2014\u201ctranquil and unmoved, with a majesty that seemed\ndivine,\u201d as Marius thought, like the old Gaul of the Invasion. The rays\nof the early November sunset slanted full upon the audience, and made\nit necessary for the officers of the Court to draw the purple curtains\nover the windows, adding to the solemnity of the scene. In the depth of\nthose warm shadows, surrounded by her ladies, the empress Faustina was\nseated to listen. The beautiful Greek statue of Victory, which since\nthe days of Augustus had presided over the assemblies of the Senate,\nhad been brought into the hall, and placed near the chair of the\nemperor; who, after rising to perform a brief sacrificial service in\nits honour, bowing reverently to the assembled fathers left and right,\ntook his seat and began to speak.\n\nThere was a certain melancholy grandeur in the very simplicity or\ntriteness of the theme: as it were the very quintessence of all the old\nRoman epitaphs, of all that was monumental in that city of tombs, layer\nupon layer of dead things and people. As if in the very fervour of\ndisillusion, he seemed to be composing\u2014H\u00f4sper epigraphas chron\u00f4n kai\nhol\u00f4n ethn\u00f4n+\u2014the sepulchral titles of ages and whole peoples; nay! the\nvery epitaph of the living Rome itself. The grandeur of the ruins of\nRome,\u2014heroism in ruin: it was under the influence of an imaginative\nanticipation of this, that he appeared to be speaking. And though the\nimpression of the actual greatness of Rome on that day was but enhanced\nby the strain of contempt, falling with an accent of pathetic\nconviction from the emperor himself, and gaining from his pontifical\npretensions the authority of a religious intimation, yet the curious\ninterest of the discourse lay in this, that Marius, for one, as he\nlistened, seemed to forsee a grass-grown Forum, the broken ways of the\nCapitol, and the Palatine hill itself in humble occupation. That\nimpression connected itself with what he had already noted of an actual\nchange even then coming over Italian scenery. Throughout, he could\ntrace something of a humour into which Stoicism at all times tends to\nfall, the tendency to cry, Abase yourselves! There was here the almost\ninhuman impassibility of one who had thought too closely on the\nparadoxical aspect of the love of posthumous fame. With the ascetic\npride which lurks under all Platonism, resultant from its opposition of\nthe seen to the unseen, as falsehood to truth\u2014the imperial Stoic, like\nhis true descendant, the hermit of the middle age, was ready, in no\nfriendly humour, to mock, there in its narrow bed, the corpse which had\nmade so much of itself in life. Marius could but contrast all that with\nhis own Cyrenaic eagerness, just then, to taste and see and touch;\nreflecting on the opposite issues deducible from the same text. \u201cThe\nworld, within me and without, flows away like a river,\u201d he had said;\n\u201ctherefore let me make the most of what is here and now.\u201d\u2014\u201cThe world\nand the thinker upon it, are consumed like a flame,\u201d said Aurelius,\n\u201ctherefore will I turn away my eyes from vanity: renounce: withdraw\nmyself alike from all affections.\u201d He seemed tacitly to claim as a sort\nof personal dignity, that he was very familiarly versed in this view of\nthings, and could discern a death\u2019s-head everywhere. Now and again\nMarius was reminded of the saying that \u201cwith the Stoics all people are\nthe vulgar save themselves;\u201d and at times the orator seemed to have\nforgotten his audience, and to be speaking only to himself.\n\n\u201cArt thou in love with men\u2019s praises, get thee into the very soul of\nthem, and see!\u2014see what judges they be, even in those matters which\nconcern themselves. Wouldst thou have their praise after death, bethink\nthee, that they who shall come hereafter, and with whom thou wouldst\nsurvive by thy great name, will be but as these, whom here thou hast\nfound so hard to live with. For of a truth, the soul of him who is\naflutter upon renown after death, presents not this aright to itself,\nthat of all whose memory he would have each one will likewise very\nquickly depart, until memory herself be put out, as she journeys on by\nmeans of such as are themselves on the wing but for a while, and are\nextinguished in their turn.\u2014Making so much of those thou wilt never\nsee! It is as if thou wouldst have had those who were before thee\ndiscourse fair things concerning thee.\n\n\u201cTo him, indeed, whose wit hath been whetted by true doctrine, that\nwell-worn sentence of Homer sufficeth, to guard him against regret and\nfear.\u2014\n\n          Like the race of leaves\nThe race of man is:\u2014\n\n\n          The wind in autumn strows\nThe earth with old leaves: then the spring\n    the woods with new endows.+\n\n\nLeaves! little leaves!\u2014thy children, thy flatterers, thine enemies!\nLeaves in the wind, those who would devote thee to darkness, who scorn\nor miscall thee here, even as they also whose great fame shall outlast\nthem. For all these, and the like of them, are born indeed in the\nspring season\u2014Earos epigignetai h\u00f4r\u00ea+: and soon a wind hath scattered\nthem, and thereafter the wood peopleth itself again with another\ngeneration of leaves. And what is common to all of them is but the\nlittleness of their lives: and yet wouldst thou love and hate, as if\nthese things should continue for ever. In a little while thine eyes\nalso will be closed, and he on whom thou perchance hast leaned thyself\nbe himself a burden upon another.\n\n\u201cBethink thee often of the swiftness with which the things that are, or\nare even now coming to be, are swept past thee: that the very substance\nof them is but the perpetual motion of water: that there is almost\nnothing which continueth: of that bottomless depth of time, so close at\nthy side. Folly! to be lifted up, or sorrowful, or anxious, by reason\nof things like these! Think of infinite matter, and thy portion\u2014how\ntiny a particle, of it! of infinite time, and thine own brief point\nthere; of destiny, and the jot thou art in it; and yield thyself\nreadily to the wheel of Clotho, to spin of thee what web she will.\n\n\u201cAs one casting a ball from his hand, the nature of things hath had its\naim with every man, not as to the ending only, but the first beginning\nof his course, and passage thither. And hath the ball any profit of its\nrising, or loss as it descendeth again, or in its fall? or the bubble,\nas it groweth or breaketh on the air? or the flame of the lamp, from\nthe beginning to the end of its brief story?\n\n\u201cAll but at this present that future is, in which nature, who disposeth\nall things in order, will transform whatsoever thou now seest,\nfashioning from its substance somewhat else, and therefrom somewhat\nelse in its turn, lest the world grow old. We are such stuff as dreams\nare made of\u2014disturbing dreams. Awake, then! and see thy dream as it is,\nin comparison with that erewhile it seemed to thee.\n\n\u201cAnd for me, especially, it were well to mind those many mutations of\nempire in time past; therein peeping also upon the future, which must\nneeds be of like species with what hath been, continuing ever within\nthe rhythm and number of things which really are; so that in forty\nyears one may note of man and of his ways little less than in a\nthousand. Ah! from this higher place, look we down upon the ship-wrecks\nand the calm! Consider, for example, how the world went, under the\nemperor Vespasian. They are married and given in marriage, they breed\nchildren; love hath its way with them; they heap up riches for others\nor for themselves; they are murmuring at things as then they are; they\nare seeking for great place; crafty, flattering, suspicious, waiting\nupon the death of others:\u2014festivals, business, war, sickness,\ndissolution: and now their whole life is no longer anywhere at all.\nPass on to the reign of Trajan: all things continue the same: and that\nlife also is no longer anywhere at all. Ah! but look again, and\nconsider, one after another, as it were the sepulchral inscriptions of\nall peoples and times, according to one pattern.\u2014What multitudes, after\ntheir utmost striving\u2014a little afterwards! were dissolved again into\ntheir dust.\n\n\u201cThink again of life as it was far off in the ancient world; as it must\nbe when we shall be gone; as it is now among the wild heathen. How many\nhave never heard your names and mine, or will soon forget them! How\nsoon may those who shout my name to-day begin to revile it, because\nglory, and the memory of men, and all things beside, are but vanity\u2014a\nsand-heap under the senseless wind, the barking of dogs, the\nquarrelling of children, weeping incontinently upon their laughter.\n\n\u201cThis hasteth to be; that other to have been: of that which now cometh\nto be, even now somewhat hath been extinguished. And wilt thou make thy\ntreasure of any one of these things? It were as if one set his love\nupon the swallow, as it passeth out of sight through the air!\n\n\u201cBethink thee often, in all contentions public and private, of those\nwhom men have remembered by reason of their anger and vehement\nspirit\u2014those famous rages, and the occasions of them\u2014the great\nfortunes, and misfortunes, of men\u2019s strife of old. What are they all\nnow, and the dust of their battles? Dust and ashes indeed; a fable, a\nmythus, or not so much as that. Yes! keep those before thine eyes who\ntook this or that, the like of which happeneth to thee, so hardly; were\nso querulous, so agitated. And where again are they? Wouldst thou have\nit not otherwise with thee?\n\nConsider how quickly all things vanish away\u2014their bodily structure into\nthe general substance; the very memory of them into that great gulf and\nabysm of past thoughts. Ah! \u2019tis on a tiny space of earth thou art\ncreeping through life\u2014a pigmy soul carrying a dead body to its grave.\n\n\u201cLet death put thee upon the consideration both of thy body and thy\nsoul: what an atom of all matter hath been distributed to thee; what a\nlittle particle of the universal mind. Turn thy body about, and\nconsider what thing it is, and that which old age, and lust, and the\nlanguor of disease can make of it. Or come to its substantial and\ncausal qualities, its very type: contemplate that in itself, apart from\nthe accidents of matter, and then measure also the span of time for\nwhich the nature of things, at the longest, will maintain that special\ntype. Nay! in the very principles and first constituents of things\ncorruption hath its part\u2014so much dust, humour, stench, and scraps of\nbone! Consider that thy marbles are but the earth\u2019s callosities, thy\ngold and silver its faeces; this silken robe but a worm\u2019s bedding, and\nthy purple an unclean fish. Ah! and thy life\u2019s breath is not otherwise,\nas it passeth out of matters like these, into the like of them again.\n\n\u201cFor the one soul in things, taking matter like wax in the hands,\nmoulds and remoulds\u2014how hastily!\u2014beast, and plant, and the babe, in\nturn: and that which dieth hath not slipped out of the order of nature,\nbut, remaining therein, hath also its changes there, disparting into\nthose elements of which nature herself, and thou too, art compacted.\nShe changes without murmuring. The oaken chest falls to pieces with no\nmore complaining than when the carpenter fitted it together. If one\ntold thee certainly that on the morrow thou shouldst die, or at the\nfurthest on the day after, it would be no great matter to thee to die\non the day after to-morrow, rather than to-morrow. Strive to think it a\nthing no greater that thou wilt die\u2014not to-morrow, but a year, or two\nyears, or ten years from to-day.\n\n\u201cI find that all things are now as they were in the days of our buried\nancestors\u2014all things sordid in their elements, trite by long usage, and\nyet ephemeral. How ridiculous, then, how like a countryman in town, is\nhe, who wonders at aught. Doth the sameness, the repetition of the\npublic shows, weary thee? Even so doth that likeness of events in the\nspectacle of the world. And so must it be with thee to the end. For the\nwheel of the world hath ever the same motion, upward and downward, from\ngeneration to generation. When, when, shall time give place to\neternity?\n\n\u201cIf there be things which trouble thee thou canst put them away,\ninasmuch as they have their being but in thine own notion concerning\nthem. Consider what death is, and how, if one does but detach from it\nthe appearances, the notions, that hang about it, resting the eye upon\nit as in itself it really is, it must be thought of but as an effect of\nnature, and that man but a child whom an effect of nature shall\naffright. Nay! not function and effect of nature, only; but a thing\nprofitable also to herself.\n\n\u201cTo cease from action\u2014the ending of thine effort to think and do: there\nis no evil in that. Turn thy thought to the ages of man\u2019s life,\nboyhood, youth, maturity, old age: the change in every one of these\nalso is a dying, but evil nowhere. Thou climbedst into the ship, thou\nhast made thy voyage and touched the shore. Go forth now! Be it into\nsome other life: the divine breath is everywhere, even there. Be it\ninto forgetfulness for ever; at least thou wilt rest from the beating\nof sensible images upon thee, from the passions which pluck thee this\nway and that like an unfeeling toy, from those long marches of the\nintellect, from thy toilsome ministry to the flesh.\n\n\u201cArt thou yet more than dust and ashes and bare bone\u2014a name only, or\nnot so much as that, which, also, is but whispering and a resonance,\nkept alive from mouth to mouth of dying abjects who have hardly known\nthemselves; how much less thee, dead so long ago!\n\n\u201cWhen thou lookest upon a wise man, a lawyer, a captain of war, think\nupon another gone. When thou seest thine own face in the glass, call up\nthere before thee one of thine ancestors\u2014one of those old Caesars. Lo!\neverywhere, thy double before thee! Thereon, let the thought occur to\nthee: And where are they? anywhere at all, for ever? And thou,\nthyself\u2014how long? Art thou blind to that thou art\u2014thy matter, how\ntemporal; and thy function, the nature of thy business? Yet tarry, at\nleast, till thou hast assimilated even these things to thine own proper\nessence, as a quick fire turneth into heat and light whatsoever be cast\nupon it.\n\n\u201cAs words once in use are antiquated to us, so is it with the names\nthat were once on all men\u2019s lips: Camillus, Volesus, Leonnatus: then,\nin a little while, Scipio and Cato, and then Augustus, and then\nHadrian, and then Antoninus Pius. How many great physicians who lifted\nwise brows at other men\u2019s sick-beds, have sickened and died! Those wise\nChaldeans, who foretold, as a great matter, another man\u2019s last hour,\nhave themselves been taken by surprise. Ay! and all those others, in\ntheir pleasant places: those who doated on a Capreae like Tiberius, on\ntheir gardens, on the baths: Pythagoras and Socrates, who reasoned so\nclosely upon immortality: Alexander, who used the lives of others as\nthough his own should last for ever\u2014he and his mule-driver alike\nnow!\u2014one upon another. Well-nigh the whole court of Antoninus is\nextinct. Panthea and Pergamus sit no longer beside the sepulchre of\ntheir lord. The watchers over Hadrian\u2019s dust have slipped from his\nsepulchre.\u2014It were jesting to stay longer. Did they sit there still,\nwould the dead feel it? or feeling it, be glad? or glad, hold those\nwatchers for ever? The time must come when they too shall be aged men\nand aged women, and decease, and fail from their places; and what shift\nwere there then for imperial service? This too is but the breath of the\ntomb, and a skinful of dead men\u2019s blood.\n\n\u201cThink again of those inscriptions, which belong not to one soul only,\nbut to whole families: Eschatos tou idiou genous:+ He was the last of\nhis race. Nay! of the burial of whole cities: Helice, Pompeii: of\nothers, whose very burial place is unknown.\n\n\u201cThou hast been a citizen in this wide city. Count not for how long,\nnor repine; since that which sends thee hence is no unrighteous judge,\nno tyrant, but Nature, who brought thee hither; as when a player leaves\nthe stage at the bidding of the conductor who hired him. Sayest thou,\n\u2018I have not played five acts\u2019? True! but in human life, three acts only\nmake sometimes an entire play. That is the composer\u2019s business, not\nthine. Withdraw thyself with a good will; for that too hath, perchance,\na good will which dismisseth thee from thy part.\u201d\n\nThe discourse ended almost in darkness, the evening having set in\nsomewhat suddenly, with a heavy fall of snow. The torches, made ready\nto do him a useless honour, were of real service now, as the emperor\nwas solemnly conducted home; one man rapidly catching light from\nanother\u2014a long stream of moving lights across the white Forum, up the\ngreat stairs, to the palace. And, in effect, that night winter began,\nthe hardest that had been known for a lifetime. The wolves came from\nthe mountains; and, led by the carrion scent, devoured the dead bodies\nwhich had been hastily buried during the plague, and, emboldened by\ntheir meal, crept, before the short day was well past, over the walls\nof the farmyards of the Campagna. The eagles were seen driving the\nflocks of smaller birds across the dusky sky. Only, in the city itself\nthe winter was all the brighter for the contrast, among those who could\npay for light and warmth. The habit-makers made a great sale of the\nspoil of all such furry creatures as had escaped wolves and eagles, for\npresents at the Saturnalia; and at no time had the winter roses from\nCarthage seemed more lustrously yellow and red.\n\nNOTES\n\n\n188. +Spenser, Shepheardes Calendar, October, 61-66.\n\n\n200. +Transliteration: H\u00f4sper epigraphas chron\u00f4n kai hol\u00f4n ethn\u00f4n.\nPater\u2019s Translation: \u201cthe sepulchral titles of ages and whole peoples.\u201d\n\n\n202. +Homer, Iliad VI.146-48.\n\n\n202. +Transliteration: Earos epigignetai h\u00f4r\u00ea. Translation: \u201cborn in\nspringtime.\u201d Homer, Iliad VI.147.\n\n\n210. +Transliteration: Eschatos tou idiou genous. Translation: \u201cHe was\nthe last of his race.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII.\nTHE \u201cMISTRESS AND MOTHER\u201d OF PALACES\n\n\nAfter that sharp, brief winter, the sun was already at work, softening\nleaf and bud, as you might feel by a faint sweetness in the air; but he\ndid his work behind an evenly white sky, against which the abode of the\nCaesars, its cypresses and bronze roofs, seemed like a picture in\nbeautiful but melancholy colour, as Marius climbed the long flights of\nsteps to be introduced to the emperor Aurelius. Attired in the newest\nmode, his legs wound in dainty fasciae of white leather, with the heavy\ngold ring of the ingenuus, and in his toga of ceremony, he still\nretained all his country freshness of complexion. The eyes of the\n\u201cgolden youth\u201d of Rome were upon him as the chosen friend of Cornelius,\nand the destined servant of the emperor; but not jealously. In spite\nof, perhaps partly because of, his habitual reserve of manner, he had\nbecome \u201cthe fashion,\u201d even among those who felt instinctively the irony\nwhich lay beneath that remarkable self-possession, as of one taking all\nthings with a difference from other people, perceptible in voice, in\nexpression, and even in his dress. It was, in truth, the air of one\nwho, entering vividly into life, and relishing to the full the\ndelicacies of its intercourse, yet feels all the while, from the point\nof view of an ideal philosophy, that he is but conceding reality to\nsuppositions, choosing of his own will to walk in a day-dream, of the\nillusiveness of which he at least is aware.\n\nIn the house of the chief chamberlain Marius waited for the due moment\nof admission to the emperor\u2019s presence. He was admiring the peculiar\ndecoration of the walls, coloured like rich old red leather. In the\nmidst of one of them was depicted, under a trellis of fruit you might\nhave gathered, the figure of a woman knocking at a door with wonderful\nreality of perspective. Then the summons came; and in a few minutes,\nthe etiquette of the imperial household being still a simple matter, he\nhad passed the curtains which divided the central hall of the palace\ninto three parts\u2014three degrees of approach to the sacred person\u2014and was\nspeaking to Aurelius himself; not in Greek, in which the emperor\noftenest conversed with the learned, but, more familiarly, in Latin,\nadorned however, or disfigured, by many a Greek phrase, as now and\nagain French phrases have made the adornment of fashionable English. It\nwas with real kindliness that Marcus Aurelius looked upon Marius, as a\nyouth of great attainments in Greek letters and philosophy; and he\nliked also his serious expression, being, as we know, a believer in the\ndoctrine of physiognomy\u2014that, as he puts it, not love only, but every\nother affection of man\u2019s soul, looks out very plainly from the window\nof the eyes.\n\nThe apartment in which Marius found himself was of ancient aspect, and\nrichly decorated with the favourite toys of two or three generations of\nimperial collectors, now finally revised by the high connoisseurship of\nthe Stoic emperor himself, though destined not much longer to remain\ntogether there. It is the repeated boast of Aurelius that he had\nlearned from old Antoninus Pius to maintain authority without the\nconstant use of guards, in a robe woven by the handmaids of his own\nconsort, with no processional lights or images, and \u201cthat a prince may\nshrink himself almost into the figure of a private gentleman.\u201d And yet,\nagain as at his first sight of him, Marius was struck by the profound\nreligiousness of the surroundings of the imperial presence. The effect\nmight have been due in part to the very simplicity, the discreet and\nscrupulous simplicity, of the central figure in this splendid abode;\nbut Marius could not forget that he saw before him not only the head of\nthe Roman religion, but one who might actually have claimed something\nlike divine worship, had he cared to do so. Though the fantastic\npretensions of Caligula had brought some contempt on that claim, which\nhad become almost a jest under the ungainly Claudius, yet, from\nAugustus downwards, a vague divinity had seemed to surround the Caesars\neven in this life; and the peculiar character of Aurelius, at once a\nceremonious polytheist never forgetful of his pontifical calling, and a\nphilosopher whose mystic speculation encircled him with a sort of\nsaintly halo, had restored to his person, without his intending it,\nsomething of that divine prerogative, or prestige. Though he would\nnever allow the immediate dedication of altars to himself, yet the\nimage of his Genius\u2014his spirituality or celestial counterpart\u2014was\nplaced among those of the deified princes of the past; and his family,\nincluding Faustina and the young Commodus, was spoken of as the \u201choly\u201d\nor \u201cdivine\u201d house. Many a Roman courtier agreed with the barbarian\nchief, who, after contemplating a predecessor of Aurelius, withdrew\nfrom his presence with the exclamation:\u2014\u201cI have seen a god to-day!\u201d The\nvery roof of his house, rising into a pediment or gable, like that of\nthe sanctuary of a god, the laurels on either side its doorway, the\nchaplet of oak-leaves above, seemed to designate the place for\nreligious veneration. And notwithstanding all this, the household of\nAurelius was singularly modest, with none of the wasteful expense of\npalaces after the fashion of Lewis the Fourteenth; the palatial dignity\nbeing felt only in a peculiar sense of order, the absence of all that\nwas casual, of vulgarity and discomfort. A merely official residence of\nhis predecessors, the Palatine had become the favourite dwelling-place\nof Aurelius; its many-coloured memories suiting, perhaps, his pensive\ncharacter, and the crude splendours of Nero and Hadrian being now\nsubdued by time. The window-less Roman abode must have had much of what\nto a modern would be gloom. How did the children, one wonders, endure\nhouses with so little escape for the eye into the world outside?\nAurelius, who had altered little else, choosing to live there, in a\ngenuine homeliness, had shifted and made the most of the level lights,\nand broken out a quite medieval window here and there, and the clear\ndaylight, fully appreciated by his youthful visitor, made pleasant\nshadows among the objects of the imperial collection. Some of these,\nindeed, by reason of their Greek simplicity and grace, themselves shone\nout like spaces of a purer, early light, amid the splendours of the\nRoman manufacture.\n\nThough he looked, thought Marius, like a man who did not sleep enough,\nhe was abounding and bright to-day, after one of those pitiless\nheadaches, which since boyhood had been the \u201cthorn in his side,\u201d\nchallenging the pretensions of his philosophy to fortify one in humble\nendurances. At the first moment, to Marius, remembering the spectacle\nof the emperor in ceremony, it was almost bewildering to be in private\nconversation with him. There was much in the philosophy of\nAurelius\u2014much consideration of mankind at large, of great bodies,\naggregates and generalities, after the Stoic manner\u2014which, on a nature\nless rich than his, might have acted as an inducement to care for\npeople in inverse proportion to their nearness to him. That has\nsometimes been the result of the Stoic cosmopolitanism. Aurelius,\nhowever, determined to beautify by all means, great or little, a\ndoctrine which had in it some potential sourness, had brought all the\nquickness of his intelligence, and long years of observation, to bear\non the conditions of social intercourse. He had early determined \u201cnot\nto make business an excuse to decline the offices of humanity\u2014not to\npretend to be too much occupied with important affairs to concede what\nlife with others may hourly demand;\u201d and with such success, that, in an\nage which made much of the finer points of that intercourse, it was\nfelt that the mere honesty of his conversation was more pleasing than\nother men\u2019s flattery. His agreeableness to his young visitor to-day\nwas, in truth, a blossom of the same wisdom which had made of Lucius\nVerus really a brother\u2014the wisdom of not being exigent with men, any\nmore than with fruit-trees (it is his own favourite figure) beyond\ntheir nature. And there was another person, still nearer to him,\nregarding whom this wisdom became a marvel, of equity\u2014of charity.\n\nThe centre of a group of princely children, in the same apartment with\nAurelius, amid all the refined intimacies of a modern home, sat the\nempress Faustina, warming her hands over a fire. With her long fingers\nlighted up red by the glowing coals of the brazier Marius looked close\nupon the most beautiful woman in the world, who was also the great\nparadox of the age, among her boys and girls. As has been truly said of\nthe numerous representations of her in art, so in life, she had the air\nof one curious, restless, to enter into conversation with the first\ncomer. She had certainly the power of stimulating a very ambiguous sort\nof curiosity about herself. And Marius found this enigmatic point in\nher expression, that even after seeing her many times he could never\nprecisely recall her features in absence. The lad of six years, looking\nolder, who stood beside her, impatiently plucking a rose to pieces over\nthe hearth, was, in outward appearance, his father\u2014the young\nVerissimus\u2014over again; but with a certain feminine length of feature,\nand with all his mother\u2019s alertness, or license, of gaze.\n\nYet rumour knocked at every door and window of the imperial house\nregarding the adulterers who knocked at them, or quietly left their\nlovers\u2019 garlands there. Was not that likeness of the husband, in the\nboy beside her, really the effect of a shameful magic, in which the\nblood of the murdered gladiator, his true father, had been an\ningredient? Were the tricks for deceiving husbands which the Roman poet\ndescribes, really hers, and her household an efficient school of all\nthe arts of furtive love? Or, was the husband too aware, like every one\nbeside? Were certain sudden deaths which happened there, really the\nwork of apoplexy, or the plague?\n\nThe man whose ears, whose soul, those rumours were meant to penetrate,\nwas, however, faithful to his sanguine and optimist philosophy, to his\ndetermination that the world should be to him simply what the higher\nreason preferred to conceive it; and the life\u2019s journey Aurelius had\nmade so far, though involving much moral and intellectual loneliness,\nhad been ever in affectionate and helpful contact with other wayfarers,\nvery unlike himself. Since his days of earliest childhood in the\nLateran gardens, he seemed to himself, blessing the gods for it after\ndeliberate survey, to have been always surrounded by kinsmen, friends,\nservants, of exceptional virtue. From the great Stoic idea, that we are\nall fellow-citizens of one city, he had derived a tenderer, a more\nequitable estimate than was common among Stoics, of the eternal\nshortcomings of men and women. Considerations that might tend to the\nsweetening of his temper it was his daily care to store away, with a\nkind of philosophic pride in the thought that no one took more\ngood-naturedly than he the \u201coversights\u201d of his neighbours. For had not\nPlato taught (it was not paradox, but simple truth of experience) that\nif people sin, it is because they know no better, and are \u201cunder the\nnecessity of their own ignorance\u201d? Hard to himself, he seemed at times,\ndoubtless, to decline too softly upon unworthy persons. Actually, he\ncame thereby upon many a useful instrument. The empress Faustina he\nwould seem at least to have kept, by a constraining affection, from\nbecoming altogether what most people have believed her, and won in her\n(we must take him at his word in the \u201cThoughts,\u201d abundantly confirmed\nby letters, on both sides, in his correspondence with Cornelius Fronto)\na consolation, the more secure, perhaps, because misknown of others.\nWas the secret of her actual blamelessness, after all, with him who has\nat least screened her name? At all events, the one thing quite certain\nabout her, besides her extraordinary beauty, is her sweetness to\nhimself.\n\nNo! The wise, who had made due observation on the trees of the garden,\nwould not expect to gather grapes of thorns or fig-trees: and he was\nthe vine, putting forth his genial fruit, by natural law, again and\nagain, after his kind, whatever use people might make of it. Certainly,\nhis actual presence never lost its power, and Faustina was glad in it\nto-day, the birthday of one of her children, a boy who stood at her\nknee holding in his fingers tenderly a tiny silver trumpet, one of his\nbirthday gifts.\u2014\u201cFor my part, unless I conceive my hurt to be such, I\nhave no hurt at all,\u201d\u2014boasts the would-be apathetic emperor:\u2014\u201cand how I\ncare to conceive of the thing rests with me.\u201d Yet when his children\nfall sick or die, this pretence breaks down, and he is broken-hearted:\nand one of the charms of certain of his letters still extant, is his\nreference to those childish sicknesses.\u2014\u201cOn my return to Lorium,\u201d he\nwrites, \u201cI found my little lady\u2014domnulam meam\u2014in a fever;\u201d and again,\nin a letter to one of the most serious of men, \u201cYou will be glad to\nhear that our little one is better, and running about the room\u2014parvolam\nnostram melius valere et intra cubiculum discurrere.\u201d\n\nThe young Commodus had departed from the chamber, anxious to witness\nthe exercises of certain gladiators, having a native taste for such\ncompany, inherited, according to popular rumour, from his true\nfather\u2014anxious also to escape from the too impressive company of the\ngravest and sweetest specimen of old age Marius had ever seen, the\ntutor of the imperial children, who had arrived to offer his birthday\ncongratulations, and now, very familiarly and affectionately, made a\npart of the group, falling on the shoulders of the emperor, kissing the\nempress Faustina on the face, the little ones on the face and hands.\nMarcus Cornelius Fronto, the \u201cOrator,\u201d favourite teacher of the\nemperor\u2019s youth, afterwards his most trusted counsellor, and now the\nundisputed occupant of the sophistic throne, whose equipage, elegantly\nmounted with silver, Marius had seen in the streets of Rome, had\ncertainly turned his many personal gifts to account with a good\nfortune, remarkable even in that age, so indulgent to professors or\nrhetoricians. The gratitude of the emperor Aurelius, always generous to\nhis teachers, arranging their very quarrels sometimes, for they were\nnot always fair to one another, had helped him to a really great place\nin the world. But his sumptuous appendages, including the villa and\ngardens of Maecenas, had been borne with an air perfectly becoming, by\nthe professor of a philosophy which, even in its most accomplished and\nelegant phase, presupposed a gentle contempt for such things. With an\nintimate practical knowledge of manners, physiognomies, smiles,\ndisguises, flatteries, and courtly tricks of every kind\u2014a whole\naccomplished rhetoric of daily life\u2014he applied them all to the\npromotion of humanity, and especially of men\u2019s family affection.\nThrough a long life of now eighty years, he had been, as it were,\nsurrounded by the gracious and soothing air of his own eloquence\u2014the\nfame, the echoes, of it\u2014like warbling birds, or murmuring bees. Setting\nforth in that fine medium the best ideas of matured pagan philosophy,\nhe had become the favourite \u201cdirector\u201d of noble youth.\n\nYes! it was the one instance Marius, always eagerly on the look-out for\nsuch, had yet seen of a perfectly tolerable, perfectly beautiful, old\nage\u2014an old age in which there seemed, to one who perhaps habitually\nover-valued the expression of youth, nothing to be regretted, nothing\nreally lost, in what years had taken away. The wise old man, whose blue\neyes and fair skin were so delicate, uncontaminate and clear, would\nseem to have replaced carefully and consciously each natural trait of\nyouth, as it departed from him, by an equivalent grace of culture; and\nhad the blitheness, the placid cheerfulness, as he had also the\ninfirmity, the claim on stronger people, of a delightful child. And yet\nhe seemed to be but awaiting his exit from life\u2014that moment with which\nthe Stoics were almost as much preoccupied as the Christians, however\ndifferently\u2014and set Marius pondering on the contrast between a\nplacidity like this, at eighty years, and the sort of desperateness he\nwas aware of in his own manner of entertaining that thought. His\ninfirmities nevertheless had been painful and long-continued, with\nlosses of children, of pet grandchildren. What with the crowd, and the\nwretched streets, it was a sign of affection which had cost him\nsomething, for the old man to leave his own house at all that day; and\nhe was glad of the emperor\u2019s support, as he moved from place to place\namong the children he protests so often to have loved as his own.\n\nFor a strange piece of literary good fortune, at the beginning of the\npresent century, has set free the long-buried fragrance of this famous\nfriendship of the old world, from below a valueless later manuscript,\nin a series of letters, wherein the two writers exchange, for the most\npart their evening thoughts, especially at family anniversaries, and\nwith entire intimacy, on their children, on the art of speech, on all\nthe various subtleties of the \u201cscience of images\u201d\u2014rhetorical\nimages\u2014above all, of course, on sleep and matters of health. They are\nfull of mutual admiration of each other\u2019s eloquence, restless in\nabsence till they see one another again, noting, characteristically,\ntheir very dreams of each other, expecting the day which will terminate\nthe office, the business or duty, which separates them\u2014\u201cas\nsuperstitious people watch for the star, at the rising of which they\nmay break their fast.\u201d To one of the writers, to Aurelius, the\ncorrespondence was sincerely of value. We see him once reading his\nletters with genuine delight on going to rest. Fronto seeks to deter\nhis pupil from writing in Greek.\u2014Why buy, at great cost, a foreign\nwine, inferior to that from one\u2019s own vineyard? Aurelius, on the other\nhand, with an extraordinary innate susceptibility to words\u2014la parole\npour la parole, as the French say\u2014despairs, in presence of Fronto\u2019s\nrhetorical perfection.\n\nLike the modern visitor to the Capitoline and some other museums,\nFronto had been struck, pleasantly struck, by the family likeness among\nthe Antonines; and it was part of his friendship to make much of it, in\nthe case of the children of Faustina. \u201cWell! I have seen the little\nones,\u201d he writes to Aurelius, then, apparently, absent from them: \u201cI\nhave seen the little ones\u2014the pleasantest sight of my life; for they\nare as like yourself as could possibly be. It has well repaid me for my\njourney over that slippery road, and up those steep rocks; for I beheld\nyou, not simply face to face before me, but, more generously, whichever\nway I turned, to my right and my left. For the rest, I found them,\nHeaven be thanked! with healthy cheeks and lusty voices. One was\nholding a slice of white bread, like a king\u2019s son; the other a crust of\nbrown bread, as becomes the offspring of a philosopher. I pray the gods\nto have both the sower and the seed in their keeping; to watch over\nthis field wherein the ears of corn are so kindly alike. Ah! I heard\ntoo their pretty voices, so sweet that in the childish prattle of one\nand the other I seemed somehow to be listening\u2014yes! in that chirping of\nyour pretty chickens\u2014to the limpid+ and harmonious notes of your own\noratory. Take care! you will find me growing independent, having those\nI could love in your place:\u2014love, on the surety of my eyes and ears.\u201d\n\n+\u201cLimpid\u201d is misprinted \u201cLimped.\u201d\n\n\n\u201cMagistro meo salutem!\u201d replies the Emperor, \u201cI too have seen my little\nones in your sight of them; as, also, I saw yourself in reading your\nletter. It is that charming letter forces me to write thus:\u201d with\nreiterations of affection, that is, which are continual in these\nletters, on both sides, and which may strike a modern reader perhaps as\nfulsome; or, again, as having something in common with the old Judaic\nunction of friendship. They were certainly sincere.\n\nTo one of those children Fronto had now brought the birthday gift of\nthe silver trumpet, upon which he ventured to blow softly now and\nagain, turning away with eyes delighted at the sound, when he thought\nthe old man was not listening. It was the well-worn, valetudinarian\nsubject of sleep, on which Fronto and Aurelius were talking together;\nAurelius always feeling it a burden, Fronto a thing of magic\ncapacities, so that he had written an encomium in its praise, and often\nby ingenious arguments recommends his imperial pupil not to be sparing\nof it. To-day, with his younger listeners in mind, he had a story to\ntell about it:\u2014\n\n\u201cThey say that our father Jupiter, when he ordered the world at the\nbeginning, divided time into two parts exactly equal: the one part he\nclothed with light, the other with darkness: he called them Day and\nNight; and he assigned rest to the night and to day the work of life.\nAt that time Sleep was not yet born and men passed the whole of their\nlives awake: only, the quiet of the night was ordained for them,\ninstead of sleep. But it came to pass, little by little, being that the\nminds of men are restless, that they carried on their business alike by\nnight as by day, and gave no part at all to repose. And Jupiter, when\nhe perceived that even in the night-time they ceased not from trouble\nand disputation, and that even the courts of law remained open (it was\nthe pride of Aurelius, as Fronto knew, to be assiduous in those courts\ntill far into the night) resolved to appoint one of his brothers to be\nthe overseer of the night and have authority over man\u2019s rest. But\nNeptune pleaded in excuse the gravity of his constant charge of the\nseas, and Father Dis the difficulty of keeping in subjection the\nspirits below; and Jupiter, having taken counsel with the other gods,\nperceived that the practice of nightly vigils was somewhat in favour.\nIt was then, for the most part, that Juno gave birth to her children:\nMinerva, the mistress of all art and craft, loved the midnight lamp:\nMars delighted in the darkness for his plots and sallies; and the\nfavour of Venus and Bacchus was with those who roused by night. Then it\nwas that Jupiter formed the design of creating Sleep; and he added him\nto the number of the gods, and gave him the charge over night and rest,\nputting into his hands the keys of human eyes. With his own hands he\nmingled the juices wherewith Sleep should soothe the hearts of\nmortals\u2014herb of Enjoyment and herb of Safety, gathered from a grove in\nHeaven; and, from the meadows of Acheron, the herb of Death; expressing\nfrom it one single drop only, no bigger than a tear one might hide.\n\u2018With this juice,\u2019 he said, \u2018pour slumber upon the eyelids of mortals.\nSo soon as it hath touched them they will lay themselves down\nmotionless, under thy power. But be not afraid: they shall revive, and\nin a while stand up again upon their feet.\u2019 Thereafter, Jupiter gave\nwings to Sleep, attached, not, like Mercury\u2019s, to his heels, but to his\nshoulders, like the wings of Love. For he said, \u2018It becomes thee not to\napproach men\u2019s eyes as with the noise of chariots, and the rushing of a\nswift courser, but in placid and merciful flight, as upon the wings of\na swallow\u2014nay! with not so much as the flutter of the dove.\u2019 Besides\nall this, that he might be yet pleasanter to men, he committed to him\nalso a multitude of blissful dreams, according to every man\u2019s desire.\nOne watched his favourite actor; another listened to the flute, or\nguided a charioteer in the race: in his dream, the soldier was\nvictorious, the general was borne in triumph, the wanderer returned\nhome. Yes!\u2014and sometimes those dreams come true!\n\nJust then Aurelius was summoned to make the birthday offerings to his\nhousehold gods. A heavy curtain of tapestry was drawn back; and beyond\nit Marius gazed for a few moments into the Lararium, or imperial\nchapel. A patrician youth, in white habit, was in waiting, with a\nlittle chest in his hand containing incense for the use of the altar.\nOn richly carved consoles, or side boards, around this narrow chamber,\nwere arranged the rich apparatus of worship and the golden or gilded\nimages, adorned to-day with fresh flowers, among them that image of\nFortune from the apartment of Antoninus Pius, and such of the emperor\u2019s\nown teachers as were gone to their rest. A dim fresco on the wall\ncommemorated the ancient piety of Lucius Albinius, who in flight from\nRome on the morrow of a great disaster, overtaking certain priests on\nfoot with their sacred utensils, descended from the wagon in which he\nrode and yielded it to the ministers of the gods. As he ascended into\nthe chapel the emperor paused, and with a grave but friendly look at\nhis young visitor, delivered a parting sentence, audible to him alone:\n_Imitation is the most acceptable part of worship:\u2014the gods had much\nrather mankind should resemble than flatter them. Make sure that those\nto whom you come nearest be the happier by your presence!_\n\nIt was the very spirit of the scene and the hour\u2014the hour Marius had\nspent in the imperial house. How temperate, how tranquillising! what\nhumanity! Yet, as he left the eminent company concerning whose ways of\nlife at home he had been so youthfully curious, and sought, after his\nmanner, to determine the main trait in all this, he had to confess that\nit was a sentiment of mediocrity, though of a mediocrity for once\nreally golden.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV.\nMANLY AMUSEMENT\n\n\nDuring the Eastern war there came a moment when schism in the empire\nhad seemed possible through the defection of Lucius Verus; when to\nAurelius it had also seemed possible to confirm his allegiance by no\nless a gift than his beautiful daughter Lucilla, the eldest of his\nchildren\u2014the domnula, probably, of those letters. The little lady,\ngrown now to strong and stately maidenhood, had been ever something of\nthe good genius, the better soul, to Lucius Verus, by the law of\ncontraries, her somewhat cold and apathetic modesty acting as\ncounterfoil to the young man\u2019s tigrish fervour. Conducted to Ephesus,\nshe had become his wife by form of civil marriage, the more solemn\nwedding rites being deferred till their return to Rome.\n\nThe ceremony of the Confarreation, or religious marriage, in which\nbride and bridegroom partook together of a certain mystic bread, was\ncelebrated accordingly, with due pomp, early in the spring; Aurelius\nhimself assisting, with much domestic feeling. A crowd of fashionable\npeople filled the space before the entrance to the apartments of Lucius\non the Palatine hill, richly decorated for the occasion, commenting,\nnot always quite delicately, on the various details of the rite, which\nonly a favoured few succeeded in actually witnessing. \u201cShe comes!\u201d\nMarius could hear them say, \u201cescorted by her young brothers: it is the\nyoung Commodus who carries the torch of white-thornwood, the little\nbasket of work-things, the toys for the children:\u201d\u2014and then, after a\nwatchful pause, \u201cshe is winding the woollen thread round the doorposts.\nAh! I see the marriage-cake: the bridegroom presents the fire and\nwater.\u201d Then, in a longer pause, was heard the chorus, Thalassie!\nThalassie! and for just a few moments, in the strange light of many wax\ntapers at noonday, Marius could see them both, side by side, while the\nbride was lifted over the doorstep: Lucius Verus heated and\nhandsome\u2014the pale, impassive Lucilla looking very long and slender, in\nher closely folded yellow veil, and high nuptial crown.\n\nAs Marius turned away, glad to escape from the pressure of the crowd,\nhe found himself face to face with Cornelius, an infrequent spectator\non occasions such as this. It was a relief to depart with him\u2014so fresh\nand quiet he looked, though in all his splendid equestrian array in\nhonour of the ceremony\u2014from the garish heat of the marriage scene. The\nreserve which had puzzled Marius so much on his first day in Rome, was\nbut an instance of many, to him wholly unaccountable, avoidances alike\nof things and persons, which must certainly mean that an intimate\ncompanionship would cost him something in the way of seemingly\nindifferent amusements. Some inward standard Marius seemed to detect\nthere (though wholly unable to estimate its nature) of distinction,\nselection, refusal, amid the various elements of the fervid and corrupt\nlife across which they were moving together:\u2014some secret, constraining\nmotive, ever on the alert at eye and ear, which carried him through\nRome as under a charm, so that Marius could not but think of that\nfigure of the white bird in the market-place as undoubtedly made true\nof him. And Marius was still full of admiration for this companion, who\nhad known how to make himself very pleasant to him. Here was the clear,\ncold corrective, which the fever of his present life demanded. Without\nit, he would have felt alternately suffocated and exhausted by an\nexistence, at once so gaudy and overdone, and yet so intolerably empty;\nin which people, even at their best, seemed only to be brooding, like\nthe wise emperor himself, over a world\u2019s disillusion. For with all the\nseverity of Cornelius, there was such a breeze of hopefulness\u2014freshness\nand hopefulness, as of new morning, about him. For the most part, as I\nsaid, those refusals, that reserve of his, seemed unaccountable. But\nthere were cases where the unknown monitor acted in a direction with\nwhich the judgment, or instinct, of Marius himself wholly concurred;\nthe effective decision of Cornelius strengthening him further therein,\nas by a kind of outwardly embodied conscience. And the entire drift of\nhis education determined him, on one point at least, to be wholly of\nthe same mind with this peculiar friend (they two, it might be,\ntogether, against the world!) when, alone of a whole company of\nbrilliant youth, he had withdrawn from his appointed place in the\namphitheatre, at a grand public show, which after an interval of many\nmonths, was presented there, in honour of the nuptials of Lucius Verus\nand Lucilla.\n\nAnd it was still to the eye, through visible movement and aspect, that\nthe character, or genius of Cornelius made itself felt by Marius; even\nas on that afternoon when he had girt on his armour, among the\nexpressive lights and shades of the dim old villa at the roadside, and\nevery object of his knightly array had seemed to be but sign or symbol\nof some other thing far beyond it. For, consistently with his really\npoetic temper, all influence reached Marius, even more exclusively than\nhe was aware, through the medium of sense. From Flavian in that brief\nearly summer of his existence, he had derived a powerful impression of\nthe \u201cperpetual flux\u201d: he had caught there, as in cipher or symbol, or\nlow whispers more effective than any definite language, his own\nCyrenaic philosophy, presented thus, for the first time, in an image or\nperson, with much attractiveness, touched also, consequently, with a\npathetic sense of personal sorrow:\u2014a concrete image, the abstract\nequivalent of which he could recognise afterwards, when the agitating\npersonal influence had settled down for him, clearly enough, into a\ntheory of practice. But of what possible intellectual formula could\nthis mystic Cornelius be the sensible exponent; seeming, as he did, to\nlive ever in close relationship with, and recognition of, a mental\nview, a source of discernment, a light upon his way, which had\ncertainly not yet sprung up for Marius? Meantime, the discretion of\nCornelius, his energetic clearness and purity, were a charm, rather\nphysical than moral: his exquisite correctness of spirit, at all\nevents, accorded so perfectly with the regular beauty of his person, as\nto seem to depend upon it. And wholly different as was this later\nfriendship, with its exigency, its warnings, its restraints, from the\nfeverish attachment to Flavian, which had made him at times like an\nuneasy slave, still, like that, it was a reconciliation to the world of\nsense, the visible world. From the hopefulness of this gracious\npresence, all visible things around him, even the commonest objects of\neveryday life\u2014if they but stood together to warm their hands at the\nsame fire\u2014took for him a new poetry, a delicate fresh bloom, and\ninterest. It was as if his bodily eyes had been indeed mystically\nwashed, renewed, strengthened.\n\nAnd how eagerly, with what a light heart, would Flavian have taken his\nplace in the amphitheatre, among the youth of his own age! with what an\nappetite for every detail of the entertainment, and its various\naccessories:\u2014the sunshine, filtered into soft gold by the vela, with\ntheir serpentine patterning, spread over the more select part of the\ncompany; the Vestal virgins, taking their privilege of seats near the\nempress Faustina, who sat there in a maze of double-coloured gems,\nchanging, as she moved, like the waves of the sea; the cool circle of\nshadow, in which the wonderful toilets of the fashionable told so\neffectively around the blazing arena, covered again and again during\nthe many hours\u2019 show, with clean sand for the absorption of certain\ngreat red patches there, by troops of white-shirted boys, for whom the\ngood-natured audience provided a scramble of nuts and small coin, flung\nto them over a trellis-work of silver-gilt and amber, precious gift of\nNero, while a rain of flowers and perfume fell over themselves, as they\npaused between the parts of their long feast upon the spectacle of\nanimal suffering.\n\nDuring his sojourn at Ephesus, Lucius Verus had readily become a\npatron, patron or prot\u00e9g\u00e9, of the great goddess of Ephesus, the goddess\nof hunters; and the show, celebrated by way of a compliment to him\nto-day, was to present some incidents of her story, where she figures\nalmost as the genius of madness, in animals, or in the humanity which\ncomes in contact with them. The entertainment would have an element of\nold Greek revival in it, welcome to the taste of a learned and\nHellenising society; and, as Lucius Verus was in some sense a lover of\nanimals, was to be a display of animals mainly. There would be real\nwild and domestic creatures, all of rare species; and a real slaughter.\nOn so happy an occasion, it was hoped, the elder emperor might even\nconcede a point, and a living criminal fall into the jaws of the wild\nbeasts. And the spectacle was, certainly, to end in the destruction, by\none mighty shower of arrows, of a hundred lions, \u201cnobly\u201d provided by\nAurelius himself for the amusement of his people.\u2014Tam magnanimus fuit!\n\nThe arena, decked and in order for the first scene, looked delightfully\nfresh, re-inforcing on the spirits of the audience the actual freshness\nof the morning, which at this season still brought the dew. Along the\nsubterranean ways that led up to it, the sound of an advancing chorus\nwas heard at last, chanting the words of a sacred song, or hymn to\nDiana; for the spectacle of the amphitheatre was, after all, a\nreligious occasion. To its grim acts of blood-shedding a kind of\nsacrificial character still belonged in the view of certain religious\ncasuists, tending conveniently to soothe the humane sensibilities of so\npious an emperor as Aurelius, who, in his fraternal complacency, had\nconsented to preside over the shows.\n\nArtemis or Diana, as she may be understood in the actual development of\nher worship, was, indeed, the symbolical expression of two allied yet\ncontrasted elements of human temper and experience\u2014man\u2019s amity, and\nalso his enmity, towards the wild creatures, when they were still, in a\ncertain sense, his brothers. She is the complete, and therefore highly\ncomplex, representative of a state, in which man was still much\noccupied with animals, not as his flock, or as his servants after the\npastoral relationship of our later, orderly world, but rather as his\nequals, on friendly terms or the reverse,\u2014a state full of primeval\nsympathies and antipathies, of rivalries and common wants\u2014while he\nwatched, and could enter into, the humours of those \u201cyounger brothers,\u201d\nwith an intimacy, the \u201csurvivals\u201d of which in a later age seem often to\nhave had a kind of madness about them. Diana represents alike the\nbright and the dark side of such relationship. But the humanities of\nthat relationship were all forgotten to-day in the excitement of a\nshow, in which mere cruelty to animals, their useless suffering and\ndeath, formed the main point of interest. People watched their\ndestruction, batch after batch, in a not particularly inventive\nfashion; though it was expected that the animals themselves, as living\ncreatures are apt to do when hard put to it, would become inventive,\nand make up, by the fantastic accidents of their agony, for the\ndeficiencies of an age fallen behind in this matter of manly amusement.\nIt was as a Deity of Slaughter\u2014the Taurian goddess who demands the\nsacrifice of the shipwrecked sailors thrown on her coasts\u2014the cruel,\nmoonstruck huntress, who brings not only sudden death, but rabies,\namong the wild creatures that Diana was to be presented, in the person\nof a famous courtesan. The aim at an actual theatrical illusion, after\nthe first introductory scene, was frankly surrendered to the display of\nthe animals, artificially stimulated and maddened to attack each other.\nAnd as Diana was also a special protectress of new-born creatures,\nthere would be a certain curious interest in the dexterously contrived\nescape of the young from their mother\u2019s torn bosoms; as many pregnant\nanimals as possible being carefully selected for the purpose.\n\nThe time had been, and was to come again, when the pleasures of the\namphitheatre centered in a similar practical joking upon human beings.\nWhat more ingenious diversion had stage manager ever contrived than\nthat incident, itself a practical epigram never to be forgottten, when\na criminal, who, like slaves and animals, had no rights, was compelled\nto present the part of Icarus; and, the wings failing him in due\ncourse, had fallen into a pack of hungry bears? For the long shows of\nthe amphitheatre were, so to speak, the novel-reading of that age\u2014a\ncurrent help provided for sluggish imaginations, in regard, for\ninstance, to grisly accidents, such as might happen to one\u2019s self; but\nwith every facility for comfortable inspection. Scaevola might watch\nhis own hand, consuming, crackling, in the fire, in the person of a\nculprit, willing to redeem his life by an act so delightful to the\neyes, the very ears, of a curious public. If the part of Marsyas was\ncalled for, there was a criminal condemned to lose his skin. It might\nbe almost edifying to study minutely the expression of his face, while\nthe assistants corded and pegged him to the bench, cunningly; the\nservant of the law waiting by, who, after one short cut with his knife,\nwould slip the man\u2019s leg from his skin, as neatly as if it were a\nstocking\u2014a finesse in providing the due amount of suffering for\nwrong-doers only brought to its height in Nero\u2019s living bonfires. But\nthen, by making his suffering ridiculous, you enlist against the\nsufferer, some real, and all would-be manliness, and do much to stifle\nany false sentiment of compassion. The philosophic emperor, having no\ngreat taste for sport, and asserting here a personal scruple, had\ngreatly changed all that; had provided that nets should be spread under\nthe dancers on the tight-rope, and buttons for the swords of the\ngladiators. But the gladiators were still there. Their bloody contests\nhad, under the form of a popular amusement, the efficacy of a human\nsacrifice; as, indeed, the whole system of the public shows was\nunderstood to possess a religious import. Just at this point,\ncertainly, the judgment of Lucretius on pagan religion is without\nreproach\u2014\n\nTantum religio potuit suadere malorum.\n\n\nAnd Marius, weary and indignant, feeling isolated in the great\nslaughter-house, could not but observe that, in his habitual\ncomplaisance to Lucius Verus, who, with loud shouts of applause from\ntime to time, lounged beside him, Aurelius had sat impassibly through\nall the hours Marius himself had remained there. For the most part\nindeed, the emperor had actually averted his eyes from the show,\nreading, or writing on matters of public business, but had seemed,\nafter all, indifferent. He was revolving, perhaps, that old Stoic\nparadox of the Imperceptibility of pain; which might serve as an\nexcuse, should those savage popular humours ever again turn against men\nand women. Marius remembered well his very attitude and expression on\nthis day, when, a few years later, certain things came to pass in Gaul,\nunder his full authority; and that attitude and expression defined\nalready, even thus early in their so friendly intercourse, and though\nhe was still full of gratitude for his interest, a permanent point of\ndifference between the emperor and himself\u2014between himself, with all\nthe convictions of his life taking centre to-day in his merciful, angry\nheart, and Aurelius, as representing all the light, all the\napprehensive power there might be in pagan intellect. There was\nsomething in a tolerance such as this, in the bare fact that he could\nsit patiently through a scene like this, which seemed to Marius to mark\nAurelius as his inferior now and for ever on the question of\nrighteousness; to set them on opposite sides, in some great conflict,\nof which that difference was but a single presentment. Due, in whatever\nproportions, to the abstract principles he had formulated for himself,\nor in spite of them, there was the loyal conscience within him,\ndeciding, judging himself and every one else, with a wonderful sort of\nauthority:\u2014You ought, methinks, to be something quite different from\nwhat you are; here! and here! Surely Aurelius must be lacking in that\ndecisive conscience at first sight, of the intimations of which Marius\ncould entertain no doubt\u2014which he looked for in others. He at least,\nthe humble follower of the bodily eye, was aware of a crisis in life,\nin this brief, obscure existence, a fierce opposition of real good and\nreal evil around him, the issues of which he must by no means\ncompromise or confuse; of the antagonisms of which the \u201cwise\u201d Marcus\nAurelius was unaware.\n\nThat long chapter of the cruelty of the Roman public shows may,\nperhaps, leave with the children of the modern world a feeling of\nself-complacency. Yet it might seem well to ask ourselves\u2014it is always\nwell to do so, when we read of the slave-trade, for instance, or of\ngreat religious persecutions on this side or on that, or of anything\nelse which raises in us the question, \u201cIs thy servant a dog, that he\nshould do this thing?\u201d\u2014not merely, what germs of feeling we may\nentertain which, under fitting circumstances, would induce us to the\nlike; but, even more practically, what thoughts, what sort of\nconsiderations, may be actually present to our minds such as might have\nfurnished us, living in another age, and in the midst of those legal\ncrimes, with plausible excuses for them: each age in turn, perhaps,\nhaving its own peculiar point of blindness, with its consequent\npeculiar sin\u2014the touch-stone of an unfailing conscience in the select\nfew.\n\nThose cruel amusements were, certainly, the sin of blindness, of\ndeadness and stupidity, in the age of Marius; and his light had not\nfailed him regarding it. Yes! what was needed was the heart that would\nmake it impossible to witness all this; and the future would be with\nthe forces that could beget a heart like that. His chosen philosophy\nhad said,\u2014Trust the eye: Strive to be right always in regard to the\nconcrete experience: Beware of falsifying your impressions. And its\nsanction had at least been effective here, in protesting\u2014\u201cThis, and\nthis, is what you may not look upon!\u201d Surely evil was a real thing, and\nthe wise man wanting in the sense of it, where, not to have been, by\ninstinctive election, on the right side, was to have failed in life.\n\nEND OF VOL. I","title":"Marius the Epicurean \u2014 Volume 1","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":56046}