“I see,” echoed Uncle Catullus, seated by Lucius’ side.
“I was reading,” Thrasyllus explained, “that at the same place where that temple now stands there once stood the city of Thonis, named after the king who hospitably entreated Menelaus and Helen. Homer mentions it and speaks of the secret herbs and precious balsams which Helen received from Queen Polydamna, Thonis’ spouse.”
“You know everything, Thrasyllus,” said Uncle Catullus, warmly, “and it is a joy to travel with you.”
“Tell the slave from Cos to sing the Hymn to Aphrodite as we row past the goddess’ temple,” said Lucius.
Thrasyllus went to Cora and communicated the master’s order. Forthwith a group of singers and dancers rose to their feet. Cora herself struck the resounding chords. And she sang:
“Mother of Eros, hear thy slave!
“Child of the foam, great goddess of love,
Aphrodite, look down from above!
Thou, who dost madden the gods with desire,
Thou, who fulfillest men’s hearts with thy fire,
All but the heart of my lord that I crave,
Hark to thy slave!”
She stood as one inspired while she sang, with her fingers on the chords, facing the temple. Around her the girls danced to the song. The movements of their lithe bodies, light as the ripple of a silken scarf in the breeze, met and dissolved in picture after picture with each word of the song. The singer’s voice swelled crystal-clear. From the bank of the canal, from the open houses, on the temple-steps the people listened to her song. In the tall reeds lay smaller boats, wherein a man and woman embraced in love. Their hands thrust aside the yielding stems; and their smiles glanced at Cora.
“All but the heart of my lord that I crave,
Hark to thy slave!”
the other singers now sang after her.
“She sings well,” said Lucius.
Cora heard him. She blushed crimson between the great rose-coloured flowers at her temples. But she behaved as though she had heard nothing. And she sat down quietly among her companions, at the foot of the silver statue of Aphrodite.
The barge glided on slowly with the others. From all of them, in turns, came music. The water of the flooding canal was like a broad golden mirror. On the bank, between the stalks of the tall reeds, the open taverns and brothels rose, wreathed in flowers, as from an enchanted lake. The women in them beckoned and waved with long lotus-stems.
But the barges glided on, towards Canopus. They were all going to the temple of Serapis. Not until after the dreams would the brothels and taverns be visited. The orgy was to come after the dream.
IX
In the strange bright summer night of light, lit by the sheen of the stars and the glow of the lamps, Canopus rose amid its slender obelisks and its spreading palm-trees. The barges lay moored to the long quay, one beside the other. One solemn train of pilgrims after another flowed down the street to the temple of Serapis. The town was alive with the whisper of music and aglow with illumination.
It was midnight. From the temple of Serapis heavy gong-strokes sounded, like a divine, golden thunder rolling at regular intervals under the stars. The singing processions, bathed in torchlight, streamed towards the temple.
There was a wide avenue paved with large, square stones. This avenue, or dromos, led to the sanctuary, the temenos, along a double row of immense basalt sphinxes, half woman, half lioness; half man, half bull. They were drawn up like superhuman sentinels that had turned to stone; and their great human faces stared raptly into the night. In between the sphinxes, the coloured lamps and lanterns blossomed like lotus-flowers, glowing blue, red and yellow.
The processions streamed into the dromos at pilgrims’ pace. Through the dromos they reached the first propylaeum, then the second, the third, the fourth. These consisted of a gigantic series of heavy pylons, painted with hieroglyphics: a veritable forest of pylon-trunks rising in serried ranks of frowning columns and crowned with heavy architraves which seemed to support the starry realm of the summer night itself. Through these endless rows of pillars the dense multitude of pilgrims in search of their dreams marched to the music of hymns. It marched with its steady, slow, regular, religious tread. And monotonous as the rhythm of its march was the melody of its hymn, borne upon ever the same harp-chords.
Lucius’ procession marched with the others. He walked gravely, with Catullus by his side; Thrasyllus followed; the slaves, male and female, followed. In front of him strode his musicians, singers and dancers. And Cora’s voice rose only a little higher in the ever-repeated hymn to the god Serapis.
The temple itself produced a sense of infinity. An immense forecourt, or pronaos, soared on high with its pillars, a forest of pylons crowned by the roof, with its painted hieroglyphics. The pronaos gave admittance to the sanctuary, the holy of holies, an immeasurable empty space, without image, without altar, without anything. Nevertheless as it were a mysterious sanctity descended here, because of the height, the impressive, colossal dimensions. The “wings,” or pteres, the two sidewalls, sculptured with symbolic bas-reliefs, painted gold, azure and scarlet, approached each other with slanting lines in a mystic perspective, where a cloud of fragrance hovered like a conflagration. Behind this the holy of holies lost itself, the abode of the god, of Serapis; invisible the statue. A swarm of acolytes, zacori and neocori, were officiating on ascending stairs, in worship before close-drawn hyacinth curtains.
The processions divided themselves along the wings, the sidewalls, as directed by the temple-keepers’ wands. It was as though a broad stream were dividing into two rivers. At the end of the wings, behind the holy of holies, flights of stairs widened in the open night, leading to terraces, the one ever higher than the other, so that they could not be overlooked. The golden gong-strokes solemnly rolled and
