revulsion at its nature and an apprehension of its consequences.

It is a female cult; and though there are priests, they are castrates who at one time allowed themselves to be used as sacrificial victims to the goddess. These victims are chosen by the priestesses-it is said that sometimes the priestesses choose their own sons as victims, since within their peculiar doctrine such a victim is the most honored and fortunate of men. He must be under the age of twenty; he must be virginal; and he must be a willing victim.

I do not know the precise nature of the rite; but I have heard, myself, from afar, the flute music and the chants in the sacred groves where the rites are performed. It is said that for three days the initiates and the members of the cult 'purify' themselves by abstinence from all fleshly things; it is said, further, that when the rites begin the celebrants intoxicate themselves by dancing, by singing, and the drinking of certain libations- whether of wine or some more mysterious substance, no one knows. Then, when the celebrants are in a frenzy induced by their music and dancing and strange drink, the ceremony begins. One of several sacrificial victims is brought before the woman who has been chosen as the ritual incarnation of the Great Goddess. Save for the fur of some wild animal tied loosely about his waist, he is naked; he is bound to a cross made of some sacred wood from the trees by the grove, by wrist and foot, with lengths of laurel wreath. After he has been placed before the goddess, the celebrants dance about him; it is said that they fling their own clothing from their bodies in their frenzy as they dance. Then the goddess approaches the boy and with the sacred knife loosens the fur that hides his nakedness; and when she finds a victim that pleases her, she cuts the laurel that constrains him, and leads him to a cave in the sacred grove, which has been prepared for the 'marriage' of the goddess and the mortal.

The marriage is supposed to be a ritual marriage; but it is a female cult, and secret, and sanctioned neither by law nor public custom. The goddess and her victim remain unseen in the cave for three days; it is said that the goddess uses her victim in whatever way pleases her; food and drink are put at the entrance of the cave, and those celebrants on the outside indulge in whatever lust or perversity that their frenzy leads them to.

After three days, the goddess and her mortal lover emerge from the cave, and cross a body of water to another sacred grove, which becomes the Island of the Blessed; and there the mortal lover becomes immortal, at least in the barbaric minds of the celebrants.

It is known to all that from Ilium to Lesbos this cult prevails, and that it numbers among its members those who belong to the richest and most cultivated families in that part of the world. When Julia's raft was upset, she was returning from such a rite as I have described, completing the prescribed ritual, crossing to the Island of the Blessed. She had been the incarnation of the goddess. And the villagers, in their abhorrence of such dark practices, could not overcome their fear of these strange beings, who (they thought) lived in a world beyond their comprehension and experience. I cannot allow the fine levied upon them to stand; for if I do, the secrecy (which now protects Julia, the unknowing Marcus Agrippa, Octavius Caesar, and even Rome itself) may be broken.

And beyond the vile practices which are rumored, there is another that is even more serious; the members of the cult are required to abjure all authority beyond the dictates of their own desires, and have no allegiance to any man, or law, or mortal custom. Thus, not only is the license of immorality encouraged-but murder, treason, and all other conceivable unlawful acts.

My dear Maecenas, I trust that now you understand why I could not write the Emperor; why I cannot speak to Marcus Agrippa; why I must burden you with this problem, even in your retirement from public affairs. You must find a way to persuade your friend and master to force Julia to return to Rome. If she is not now corrupted beyond retrieval, she will be soon, if she remains in this strange land that she has discovered.

II. The Journal of Julici, Pandateria (A.D. 4)

I have never known why my father ordered me, in terms that I could not disobey, to return to Rome. He never gave me a reason sufficient to justify the strength of his command; he merely said that it was unseemly that the wife of the Second Citizen be so long absent from the people who loved her, and that there were certain social and religious duties that only I and Livia could perform. I did not believe that that was the true reason for my recall, but he did not allow me to question him further. But he could not fail to know that I had resented my return; it seemed to me then that I was being exiled from the only life in which I had ever been myself, and that I was to spend my days performing a kind of duty in which I no longer could see any meaning.

In any event, it was Nicolaus-that odd little Syrian Jew, of whom my father was unaccountably fond and whom he trusted-who delivered the message to me, traveling all the way from Jerusalem to find me at Mytilene on Lesbos.

I was angry, and I said to him: 'I will not go. He cannot force me to return.'

Nicolaus shrugged. 'He is your father,' he said.

'My husband,' I said. 'I am with my husband.'

'Your husband,' Nicolaus said; 'your husband is in the Bosporus. Your husband is your father's friend. Your father is the Emperor. He misses you, I suspect. And Rome-it will be spring when we return.'

And so we set sail from Lesbos, and I watched the islands slip by, like clouds in a dream. It was my life, I thought, that slipped behind me; it was the life in which I had been a queen, and more than a queen. And as the days passed, and as we drew nearer to Rome, I knew that she who returned was not the same woman who had left, three years before.

And I knew that the life to which I returned would be different. I did not know how it would be so, but I knew that it would be. Not even Rome could awe me now, I thought. And I remember that I wondered if I would still feel like a child when I saw my father.

I returned to Rome in the year of the consulship of Tiberius Claudius Nero, the son of Livia and the husband of my husband's daughter, Vipsania. I was twenty-five years of age. Who had been a goddess returned to Rome a mere woman, and in bitterness.

III. Letter: Publius Ovidius Naso to Sextus Propertius, in Assisi (13 B. c.)

Dear Sextus, my friend and my master-how do you thrive in that melancholy exile you have imposed upon yourself) Your Ovid beseeches you to return to Rome, where you are sorely missed. Things here are not nearly so gloomy as you may have been led to believe; a new star is in the Roman sky, and once again those who have the wit to do so may live in gaiety and pleasure. Indeed, during the past few months, I have concluded that I would be in no other time and in no other place.

You are the master of my art, and older than I-yet can you be sure that you are wiser? Your melancholy may be of your own constitution, rather than Rome's making. Do return to us; there is pleasure yet, before the night comes down upon us.

But forgive me; you know that I am not suited for weighty talk, and once having begun cannot sustain it. I intended at the outset of this letter merely to tell you of a delightful day, hoping that I could persuade you by that to return to us.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the Emperor Octavius Caesar's birth, and thus a Roman holiday; yet it began for me unpropitiously enough. I was in my office disgracefully early- at the first hour, no less, just as the sun was beginning to struggle up from the east through the forest of buildings that is Rome, bringing the city to its feet-for though one may not plead a case on such a holiday as this, one may have to do so the next day; and I had a particularly difficult brief to prepare. It seems that Cornelius Apronius, who has retained me, is suing Fabius Creticus for nonpayment for some lands, while Creticus is countersuing, claiming that the title to the lands is faulty. Both are thieves; neither has a case; thus the skill of the brief and the persuasion of the pleading are most important-as, of course, is the chance of magistrate.

In any event, I had been working all morning; marvelous lines kept popping into my head, as they always do when I am laboring at something that bores me; my secretary was particularly slow and fumbling; and the noise that came from the Forum grated against my ears much more fiercely than it should have done. I was becoming increasingly irritable, and for the hundredth time swore that I should give up this foolish career that in the long run will only give me riches I do not need and the dull distinction of senatorial office.

Then, in the midst of my boredom, a remarkable thing happened. I heard a clatter outside my door, and laughter; and though I heard no knock, my door burst open, and there stood before me the most remarkable eunuch I have ever seen- coiffed and perfumed, dressed in elegant silks, with emeralds and rubies on his fingers, he stood before me as if he were better than a freedman, better even than a citizen.

'This is not the Saturnalia,' I said angrily. 'Who has given you leave to burst in upon me?'

'My mistress,' he said in a shrill, effeminate voice; 'my mistress bids you attend me.'

'Your mistress,' I said, 'may rot, for all I care… Who is she?'

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