VIII
During those evenings of the summer festival, Alexandria was lighted more brilliantly than Rome itself. The town glittered with hundreds of lights, lamps, lanterns, torches and links; it glittered in its harbours, where the blinding sheaves of light floated from the dome of the lighthouse; it glittered in its two main streets, which intersected each other; it glittered in the colonnades of the Museum and the Gymnasium, colonnades and stadia themselves restlessly teeming, up to where the multitude were making merry for the festival.
But above all it glittered over Lake Mareotis and the Canopus Canal. The splendid villas on the lake were bright with many-coloured lanterns and balls of fire; the temple of Aphrodite, on the eyot, was silhouetted in flaring lines; and over the golden waters of the lake itself the illuminated boats pressed and crowded, filled with song, filled with dance, full of colour, gladness and joy; streamers flapped and rugs trailed over the sides of the boats down to the water.
Through the lighted streets the bearers hurried and thronged with the litters towards Lake Mareotis. They hurried from the diversorium, with the harpists and the dancing-girls and a great procession of slaves in festive raiment. An army of freedmen followed on horses and mules; and the passersby pointed to the imposing procession, evidently the household of a very wealthy Roman who was going to Canopus to dream.
The procession reached a landing-stage on the lake. Here a great barge lay moored, a thalamegus which Caleb had succeeded in hiring at the last moment for a vast sum of money. The thalamegus was painted blue and gilded, with blue-and-gilt oars, which stuck out like so many swan’s-legs. Caleb had had her covered with tapestry and adorned with wreaths of flowers and festoons of leaves. The silver statue of Aphrodite stood on the prow, with incense burning before it. The troop of slaves, male and female, and freedmen, with Vettius and Rufus, hastened on board to await the master’s coming.
A dense multitude pressed round to look on greedily. Now a Roman litter approached, recognizable by its square shape; yet another and the master alighted, with the aid of his slaves, male and female. He was accompanied by an old, corpulent kinsman and a grave tutor.
“He’s going dreaming! He’s going dreaming!” cried the populace. “See, he has his dreaming-veil on! He looks like Serapis himself!”
Beggars crowded round the travellers:
“Divine lord and exalted prince! Image of Horus, the son of Osiris! May Serapis send you good dreams! May Serapis load you with blessings! May he keep bad dreams locked far from you, in the shadowy underworld!”
The stewards distributed money among the beggars. Lucius had gone on board. The slave-girls scattered flowers before his feet as he walked.
The song of the rowers was heard from the body of the boat. The creaking ropes were cast off; the barge glided towards the middle of the lake. She gleamed with blue, green and yellow lights and left a trail of brightness in her wake; the water was bright around her. On the banks the villas and palaces of light stood in gardens of light.
Hundreds of other barges were gliding slowly in the same direction. Above the monotonous drone of the rowers’ song rang ballads and hymns. The music of citharas was heard in descending chords; the harps rang out; the notes of double flutes quavered through the evening air with a magic intoxication of melody.
The waters of the lake stood high. It was the month when the kindly Nile stepped outside its banks with a moist foot and overflowed the Delta. The golden waters of the lake lapped higher than the marble steps of the villas down which the brilliant hetairae descended, holding the lappets of their veils, to take their seats on the cushions of their barges.
Flowers fell on the water, in unison with the notes of hymn and song. All the craft, hundreds and hundreds, large and small, barges and coracles, square rafts and canoes, pressed gently forward towards the entrance of the Canopian Canal. On the banks were thousands of idlers and spectators, all the people of Alexandria.
The vessels glided to the harmony of the twanged strings into the broad canal. It was very full of water; the banks were flooded. Reeds tall as a man, biblos and cyamos, rose like pillars, blossoming during this month with thousands of waving plumes: the leaves of the biblos were long and bending over, as though each were languidly broken; those of the cyamos were round as scales and goblet-deep, stacked one above the other along the stems, like cups.1 In the light on the barges, golden patches glowed among the stalks; and the reeds and rushes blossomed up as though out of molten gold.
Here lay the Canopian harbour, here the suburb of Eleusis; and the canal split into two branches. The narrower channel led to Schedia, on the Nile; the broader led past Nicopolis to Canopus.
Beyond stretched the sea, wide and blue. Only a narrow strip of land separated it from the canal; and it lay boundless under a thousand twinkling stars.
“Lucius,” said Thrasyllus, sitting spellbound at the feet of the young Roman, who sat on a raised throne and gazed in front of him like a priest, full of longing for his dream of that night, “Lucius, my Lord Catullus, look! We have passed Nicopolis, with its amphitheatre and stadium; and yonder lies Taposiris, with Cape Zephyrium; and on a height I can see the temple of Aphrodite Arsinoe.”
“I see,” said Lucius, turning his eyes towards the temple, which was lit
