Her predictions were sinister. For some time the oracles everywhere had been foretelling annoyances for me of every sort, political troubles, palace intrigues, and serious illness. I now believe that some decidedly human influences were at work upon those voices from below, sometimes to warn me, more often to frighten me. The true condition of one part of the Orient was more clearly explained therein than in the reports of our proconsuls. I took these so-called revelations with calm, since my respect for the invisible world did not go so far as to give credence to such divine claptrap: ten years before, soon after my accession to power, I had ordered the closing of the oracle of Daphne, near Antioch, which had foretold my rule, for fear that it might do the same for the first pretender who should appear. But it is always annoying to hear talk of trouble.
After having disturbed us to the best of her ability the prophetess offered her aid: one of those magical sacrifices in which Egyptian sorcerers specialize would suffice to put everything right with destiny. My explorations in Phoenician magic had already shown me that the horror of these forbidden practices lies less in what is revealed to us than in what they hide from our sight; if my abomination of human sacrifice had not been well known this practitioner would probably have advised the immolation of a slave. As it was she contented herself with speaking of some pet animal.
Had it been at all possible the sacrificial victim should have belonged to me; it could not be a dog, which is an animal considered unclean in Egyptian superstition; a bird would have done, but I do not travel with an aviary. My young master proposed his falcon. The conditions would be fulfilled thereby; I had given him this beautiful bird after I had myself received it from the king of Osroene. The boy fed it himself; it was one of the rare possessions to which he was attached. At first I refused; he insisted, gravely; I gathered that he attributed some extraordinary significance to the offer, so I accepted, out of affection. Provided with the most detailed instructions, my courier Menecrates went to fetch the bird from our apartments in the Serapeion. Even at a gallop the errand would take, in all, more than two hours. There was no question of passing the interval in the dirty hole of the magician, and Lucius complained of the dampness aboard the boat. Phlegon found an expedient: we installed ourselves as well as we could in the house of a procuress after the inmates of the place had been disposed of. Lucius decided to sleep; I made use of the time to dictate some dispatches, and Antinous stretched out at my feet. Phlegon’s reed pen scratched away under the lamp. The last watch of the night was beginning when Menecrates brought back the bird, the glove, the hood, and the chain.
We returned to the house of the magician. Antinous removed the falcon’s hood and for some moments caressed its little head, so sleepy and so wild, then handed it to the enchantress, who began a series of magic passes. The bird, fascinated, fell asleep again. It was important that the victim should not struggle, and that the death should appear voluntary. Rubbed over with ritual honey and attar of roses, the animal, now inert, was placed in the bottom of a tub filled with Nile water; in drowning thus it was to be assimilated to Osiris borne along on the river’s current; the bird’s earthly years were added to mine, and the little soul, issue of the sun, was united with the Genius of him for whom the sacrifice was made; the invisible Genius could hereafter appear to me and serve me under this form. The long manipulations which followed were no more interesting than some preparation for cooking. Lucius began to yawn. The ceremonies imitated human funerals in every detail: the fumigations and the psalm singing dragged on until dawn. The bird was finally enclosed in a casket lined with aromatic substances and the magician buried it in our presence at the edge of the canal, in an abandoned cemetery. When she had finished she crouched under a tree to count one by one the gold pieces which Phlegon paid her.
We re-embarked. An unusually cold wind was blowing. Lucius, seated near me, drew closer the embroidered cotton coverlets with the tips of his slender fingers; for politeness’ sake we continued to exchange remarks at broken intervals about business and scandal in Rome. Antinous, lying in the bottom of the boat, had leaned his head on my knees, pretending to sleep in order to keep apart from a conversation which did not include him. My hand passed over his neck, under his heavy hair; thus even in the dullest or most futile moments I kept some feeling of contact with the great objects of nature, the thick growth of the forests, the muscular back of the panther, the regular pulsation of springs; but no caress goes so deep as the soul. The sun was shining when we reached the Serapeion, and the melon merchants were crying their wares in the streets. I slept until time for the session of the local Council, which I attended. I learned later that Antinous took advantage of my absence to persuade Chabrias to go with him to Canopus. He went back to the house of the magician.
The first of the month of Athyr, the second year of the two hundred and twenty-sixth Olympiad… . That is the anniversary of the death of Osiris, the god of the dying; along the river piercing cries of lamentation had resounded from all the villages for three days’ time. My Roman guests, less accustomed than I to the mysteries of the East, showed a certain curiosity for those ceremonies of another race. For me, on the contrary, they were tiring and irritating to the extreme. I had ordered my boat anchored at some distance from the others, far from any habitation; but a half-abandoned temple of the time of the Pharaohs stood near the river bank and had still its school of priests, so I did not entirely escape the sound of wailing.
On the preceding evening Lucius invited me to supper on his boat. I went there at sunset. Antinous refused to go with me, so I left him alone in my stern deck cabin lying on his lion skin, playing at knucklebones with Chabrias. Half an hour later, just as night fell, he changed his mind and called for a boat. Aided by a single oarsman, and pulling against the current, he rowed the considerable distance which separated us from the other boats. His entry into the deck tent where the supper was given interrupted the applause for the contortions of a dancing girl. He had arrayed himself in a long Syrian robe, sheer as the skin of a fruit and strewn over with flowers and chimeras. In order to row more easily he had freed his right arm from its sleeve; sweat was trembling on the smooth chest. Lucius tossed him a garland which he caught in mid-air; his gaiety, almost strident, did not abate for one moment, though hardly sustained by a single cup of Greek wine. We returned together in my boat with six oarsmen, followed by the cutting “good night” of Lucius from above. The wild gay mood persisted. But in the morning I happened by chance to touch a face wet with tears. I asked him impatiently the cause for such crying; he replied humbly, excusing himself on the ground of fatigue. I accepted the lie and fell back to sleep. His true agony took place in that bed, there beside me.
The mail from Rome had just come, and the day went by in reading and answering it. As usual Antinous went silently about the room; I know not at what moment that fair creature passed out of my life. Toward the twelfth hour Chabrias entered, in great agitation. Contrary to all regulations the youth had left the boat without stating his purpose or the length of his intended absence; two hours at least had gone by since his departure. Chabrias recalled some strange things said the evening before, and a recommendation made that very morning, concerning me. He voiced his fears. We descended in haste to the river bank. As if by instinct the old tutor made for a chapel on the water’s edge, a small structure apart which was one of the outbuildings of the temple, and which he and Antinous had visited together. On an offering table lay ashes still warm from a sacrifice; turning them with his fingers, Chabrias drew forth a lock of hair, almost intact.
There was no longer anything for us to do but to search the shore. A series of reservoirs which must once have served for sacred ceremonies extended to a bend of the river; on the edge of the last basin Chabrias perceived in the rapidly lowering dusk a folded garment and sandals. I descended the slippery steps; he was lying at the bottom, already sunk in the river’s mud. With Chabrias’ aid I managed to lift the body, which had suddenly taken on the weight of stone. Chabrias hailed some boatmen who improvised a stretcher from sail cloth. Hermogenes, called in haste, could only pronounce him dead. That body, once so responsive, refused to be warmed again or revived. We took him aboard. Everything gave way; everything seemed extinguished. The Olympian Zeus, Master of All, Saviour of the World?all toppled together, and there was only a man with greying hair sobbing on the deck of a boat.
Two days went by before Hermogenes could get me to think of the funeral. The sacrificial rites with which Antinous had chosen to surround his death showed us a course to follow: it would not be for nothing that the day and hour of that end had coincided with the moment when Osiris descends into the tomb. I crossed the river to Hermopolis, to its quarter of embalmers. I had seen their work in Alexandria and knew to what outrages I was submitting this body; but fire is horrible too, searing and charring the beloved flesh; and in the earth it rots. The crossing was brief; squatting in a corner of the stern cabin Euphorion chanted in a low voice I know not what African dirge; this hoarse, half-muffled song seemed to me almost my own cry. We transferred the beloved dead into a room cleanly flushed with water which reminded me of the clinic of Satyrus; I aided the castmaker to oil the face before the wax was applied. All the metaphors took on meaning: I held that heart in my hands. When I left the empty body it was no more than an embalmer’s preparation, the first stage of a frightful masterpiece, a precious substance treated with salt and gum of myrrh, and never again to be touched by sun or air.
On the return I visited the temple near which the sacrifice had been consummated; I spoke with the priests.
