'It is not very old,' said Glaucus, 'but it has been made precocious,
like ourselves, by being put to the fire:--the wine to the flames of
Vulcan--we to those of his wife--to whose honour I pour this cup.'
'It is delicate,' said Pansa, 'but there is perhaps the least particle
too much of rosin in its flavor.'
'What a beautiful cup!' cried Clodius, taking up one of transparent
crystal, the handles of which were wrought with gems, and twisted in the
shape of serpents, the favorite fashion at Pompeii.
'This ring,' said Glaucus, taking a costly jewel from the first joint of
his finger and hanging it on the handle, 'gives it a richer show, and
renders it less unworthy of thy acceptance, my Clodius, on whom may the
gods bestow health and fortune, long and oft to crown it to the brim!'
'You are too generous, Glaucus,' said the gamester, handing the cup to
his slave; 'but your love gives it a double value.'
'This cup to the Graces!' said Pansa, and he thrice emptied his calix.
The guests followed his example.
'We have appointed no director to the feast,' cried Sallust.
'Let us throw for him, then,' said Clodius, rattling the dice-box.
'Nay,' cried Glaucus, 'no cold and trite director for us: no dictator of
the banquet; no rex convivii. Have not the Romans sworn never to obey a
king? Shall we be less free than your ancestors? Ho! musicians, let us
have the song I composed the other night: it has a verse on this
subject, "The Bacchic hymn of the Hours".'
The musicians struck their instruments to a wild Ionic air, while the
youngest voice in the band chanted forth, in Greek words, as numbers,
the following strain:--
THE EVENING HYMN OF THE HOURS
I
Through the summer day, through the weary day,
We have glided long;
Ere we speed to the Night through her portals grey,
Hail us with song!--
With song, with song,
With a bright and joyous song;
Such as the Cretan maid,
While the twilight made her bolder,
Woke, high through the ivy shade,
When the wine-god first consoled her.
From the hush'd, low-breathing skies,
Half-shut look'd their starry eyes,
And all around,
With a loving sound,
The AEgean waves were creeping:
On her lap lay the lynx's head;
Wild thyme was her bridal bed;
And aye through each tiny space,
In the green vine's green embrace
The Fauns were slily peeping--
The Fauns, the prying Fauns--
The arch, the laughing Fauns--
The Fauns were slily peeping!
II
Flagging and faint are we
With our ceaseless flight,
And dull shall our journey be
Through the realm of night,
Bathe us, O bathe our weary wings
In the purple wave, as it freshly springs
To your cups from the fount of light--
From the fount of light--from the fount of light,
For there, when the sun has gone down in night,
There in the bowl we find him.
The grape is the well of that summer sun,
Or rather the stream that he gazed upon,
Till he left in truth, like the Thespian youth,
His soul, as he gazed, behind him.
III
A cup to Jove, and a cup to Love,
And a cup to the son of Maia;
And honour with three, the band zone-free,
The band of the bright Aglaia.
But since every bud in the wreath of pleasure
Ye owe to the sister Hours,
No stinted cups, in a formal measure,
The Bromian law makes ours.
He honors us most who gives us most,
And boasts, with a Bacchanal's honest boast,
He never will count the treasure.
Fastly we fleet, then seize our wings,
And plunge us deep in the sparkling springs;
And aye, as we rise with a dripping plume,
We'll scatter the spray round the garland's bloom;
We glow--we glow,
Behold, as the girls of the Eastern wave
Bore once with a shout to the crystal cave
The prize of the Mysian Hylas,
Even so--even so,
We have caught the young god in our warm embrace
We hurry him on in our laughing race;
We hurry him on, with a whoop and song,
The cloudy rivers of night along--
Ho, ho!--we have caught thee, Psilas!
The guests applauded loudly. When the poet is your host, his verses are
sure to charm.
'Thoroughly Greek,' said Lepidus: 'the wildness, force, and energy of
that tongue, it is impossible to imitate in the Roman poetry.'
'It is, indeed, a great contrast,' said Clodius, ironically at heart,
though not in appearance, 'to the old-fashioned and tame simplicity of
that ode of Horace which we heard before. The air is beautifully Ionic:
the word puts me in mind of a toast--Companions, I give you the
beautiful Ione.'
'Ione!--the name is Greek,' said Glaucus, in a soft voice. 'I drink the
health with delight. But who is Ione?'
'Ah! you have but just come to Pompeii, or you would deserve ostracism
for your ignorance,' said Lepidus, conceitedly; 'not to know Ione, is
not to know the chief charm of our city.'
'She is of the most rare beauty,' said Pansa; 'and what a voice!'
'She can feed only on nightingales' tongues,' said Clodius.
'Nightingales' tongues!--beautiful thought!' sighed the umbra.
'Enlighten me, I beseech you,' said Glaucus.
'Know then...' began Lepidus.
'Let me speak,' cried Clodius; 'you drawl out your words as if you spoke
tortoises.'
'And you speak stones,' muttered the coxcomb to himself, as he fell back
disdainfully on his couch.
'Know then, my Glaucus,' said Clodius, 'that Ione is a stranger who has
but lately come to Pompeii. She sings like Sappho, and her songs are
her own composing; and as for the tibia, and the cithara, and the lyre,
I know not in which she most outdoes the Muses. Her beauty is most
dazzling. Her house is perfect; such taste--such gems--such bronzes!
She is rich, and generous as she is rich.'
'Her lovers, of course,' said Glaucus, 'take care that she does not
starve; and money lightly won is always lavishly spent.'
'Her lovers--ah, there is the enigma!--Ione has but one vice--she is
chaste. She has all Pompeii at her feet, and she has no lovers: she will
not even marry.'
'No lovers!' echoed Glaucus.
'No; she has the soul of Vestal with the girdle of Venus.'
'What refined expressions!' said the umbra.
'A miracle!' cried Glaucus. 'Can we not see her?'
'I will take you there this evening, said Clodius; 'meanwhile...' added
he, once more rattling the dice.
'I am yours!' said the complaisant Glaucus. 'Pansa, turn your face!'
Lepidus and Sallust played at odd and even, and the umbra looked on,
while Glaucus and Clodius became gradually absorbed in the chances of
the dice.
'By Pollux!' cried Glaucus, 'this is the second time I have thrown the
caniculae' (the lowest throw).
'Now Venus befriend me!' said Clodius, rattling the box for several
moments. 'O Alma Venus--it is Venus herself!' as he threw the highest
cast, named from that goddess--whom he who wins money, indeed, usually
propitiates!
'Venus is ungrateful to me,' said Glaucus, gaily; 'I have always
sacrificed on her altar.'
'He who plays with Clodius,' whispered Lepidus, 'will soon, like
Plautus's Curculio, put his pallium for the stakes.'
'Poor Glaucus!--he is as blind as Fortune herself,' replied Sallust, in
the same tone.
'I will play no more,' said Glaucus; 'I have lost thirty sestertia.'
'I am sorry...' began Clodius.
'Amiable man!' groaned the umbra.
'Not at all!' exclaimed Glaucus; 'the pleasure I take in your gain
compensates the pain of my loss.'
The conversation now grew general and animated; the wine circulated more
freely; and Ione once more became the subject of eulogy to the guests of
Glaucus.
'Instead of outwatching the stars, let us visit one at whose beauty the
stars grow pale,' said Lepidus.
Clodius, who saw no chance of renewing the dice, seconded the proposal;
and Glaucus, though he civilly pressed his guests to continue the
banquet, could not but let them see that his curiosity had been excited
by the praises of Ione: they therefore resolved to adjourn (all, at
least, but Pansa and the umbra) to the house of the fair Greek. They
drank, therefore, to the health of Glaucus and of Titus--they performed
their last libation--they resumed their slippers--they descended the
stairs--passed the illumined atrium--and walking unbitten over the
fierce dog painted on the threshold, found themselves beneath the light
of the moon just risen, in the lively and still crowded streets of
Pompeii.
They passed the jewellers' quarter, sparkling with lights, caught and
reflected by the gems displayed in the shops, and arrived at last at the
door of Ione. The vestibule blazed with rows of lamps; curtains of
embroidered purple hung on either aperture of the tablinum, whose walls
and mosaic pavement glowed with the richest colors of the artist; and
under the portico which surrounded the odorous viridarium they found
Ione, already surrounded by adoring and applauding guests!
'Did you say she was Athenian?' whispered Glaucus, ere he passed into
the peristyle.
'No, she is from Neapolis.'
'Neapolis!' echoed Glaucus; and at that moment the group, dividing on
either side of Ione, gave to his view that bright, that nymph-like
beauty, which for months had shone down upon the waters of his memory.
Chapter IV
THE TEMPLE OF ISIS. ITS PRIEST. THE CHARACTER OF ARBACES DEVELOPS
ITSELF.
THE story returns to the Egyptian. We left Arbaces upon the shores of
the noonday sea, after he had parted from Glaucus and his companion. As
he approached to the more crowded part of the bay, he paused and gazed
upon that animated scene with folded arms, and a bitter smile upon his
dark features.
'Gulls, dupes, fools, that ye are!' muttered he to himself; 'whether
business or pleasure, trade or religion, be your pursuit, you are
equally cheated by the passions that ye should rule! How I could loathe
you, if I did not hate--yes, hate! Greek or Roman, it is from us, from
the dark lore of Egypt, that ye have stolen the fire that gives you
souls. Your knowledge--your poesy--your laws--your arts--your barbarous
mastery of war (all how tame and mutilated, when compared with the vast
original!)--ye have filched, as a slave filches the fragments of the
feast, from us! And now, ye mimics of a mimic!--Romans, forsooth! the
mushroom herd of robbers! ye are our masters! the pyramids look down no
more on the race of Rameses--the eagle cowers over the serpent of the
Nile. Our masters--no, not mine. My soul, by the power of its wisdom,
controls and chains you, though the fetters are unseen. So long as
craft can master force, so long as religion has a cave from which
oracles can dupe mankind, the wise hold an empire over earth. Even from
your vices Arbaces distills his pleasures--pleasures unprofaned by
vulgar eyes--pleasures vast, wealthy, inexhaustible, of which your
enervate minds, in their unimaginative sensuality, cannot conceive or
dream! Plod on, plod on, fools of ambition and of avarice! your petty
thirst for fasces and quaestorships, and all the mummery of servile
power, provokes my laughter and my scorn. My power can extend wherever
man believes. I ride over the souls that the purple veils. Thebes may
fall, Egypt be a name; the world itself furnishes the subjects of
Arbaces.'
Thus saying, the Egyptian moved slowly on; and, entering the town, his
tall figure towered above the crowded throng of the forum, and swept
towards the small but graceful temple consecrated to Isis.
That edifice was then but of recent erection; the ancient temple had
been thrown down in the earthquake sixteen years before, and the new
building had become as much in vogue with the versatile Pompeians as a
new church or a new preacher may be with us. The oracles of the goddess
at Pompeii were indeed remarkable, not more for the mysterious language
in which they were clothed, than for the credit which was attached to
their mandates and predictions. If they were not dictated by a
divinity, they were framed at least by a profound knowledge of mankind;
they applied themselves exactly to the circumstances of individuals, and
made a notable contrast to the vague and loose generalities of their
rival temples. As Arbaces now arrived at the rails which separated the
profane from the sacred place, a crowd, composed of all classes, but
especially of the commercial, collected, breathless and reverential,
before the many altars which rose in the open court. In the walls of
the cella, elevated on seven steps of Parian marble, various statues
stood in niches, and those walls were ornamented with the pomegranate
consecrated to Isis. An oblong pedestal occupied the interior building,
on which stood two statues, one of Isis, and its companion represented
the silent and mystic Orus. But the building contained many other
deities to grace the court of the Egyptian deity: her kindred and
many-titled Bacchus, and the Cyprian Venus, a Grecian disguise for
herself, rising from her bath, and the dog-headed Anubis, and the ox
Apis, and various Egyptian idols of uncouth form and unknown
