DANCING GIRLS FROM GADES
Sónnica awoke two hours after midday. The oblique rays of the sun filtered through the gilded bars of her window over which crept the foliage of grapevines. Its light heightened the color of the stucco frames around scenes from the Olympian games painted on the wall, and of the columns of rose-colored marble which flanked the doorway.
The beautiful Greek threw to the floor the covers of white Sætabis linen, and her first glance swept her figure, taking in the outlines of her body with affectionate eyes, from her swelling bosom curving in harmonious lines, to the tips of her rosy feet.
Her heavy hair perfumed and falling in silky curls, hung down over her body, enveloping her as in a regal mantle, caressing her from throat to knees with a gentle kiss. The old-time courtesan, as she awoke, admired her body with the adoration inspired in her by the eulogies of the artists of Athens.
She was still young and beautiful; she could still thrill men with emotion when, at the end of a banquet, she displayed herself upon the table nude as Phryne. Her hands eager for the thrilling touch of her beauty, caressed her firm round throat, the pearly globes terminating in a soft rose petal, testing their firm elasticity, and the winding network of slender blue veins delicately outlined beneath the satiny skin, flowing down, down—in line with the strongly incurved waist; the rotund hips, the slightly rounded abdomen, like that of a crater, and the limbs the harmonious proportions of which had been compared in other times to the elephant's trunk by the Asiatic merchants who visited her in Athens.
Passion had swept its fiery tongue over her without consuming her; she had lived in the midst of its ardor, cold, emotionless, and white, like a marble statue in the warmth of the sun. Seeing herself young, still beautiful, and with a virginal freshness, she smiled, pleased with herself, content with life.
"Odacis! Odacis!"
At the echo of her voice there entered a Celtiberian slave, tall, spare, strong, whom the Greek valued highly for the gentleness with which she combed her hair.
Supporting herself on the shoulders of the slave, she raised up and sprang from the couch to enter the bath.
Her nude form was invested by her hair like a transparent, golden veil. As her bare feet pressed the mosaic, which depicted the Judgment of Paris, the chill of the tiles with its agreeable shock brought a smile to her lips; her laugh deepened the dimples in her cheeks, and the reaction caused the curves of her body to quiver with gentle undulations.
She descended three steps and threw herself into the jasper piscina swinging her arms and splashing the water into tiny pearls. In the green pool her body assumed an ideal transparency, the glow of a fantastic apparition, and she moved from one side of the tank to the other like a siren with pearly back and floating hair.
"Who has come, Odacis?" she asked, lying deep in the bath.
"The women from Gades, who danced last night, have arrived. Polyanthus has given them lodgings near the kitchens."
"And who else?"
"A moment ago the stranger from Athens, whom you met this morning at the temple of Aphrodite. I have had him go into the library, and I have forgotten none of the duties of hospitality. He has just come from the bath."
Sónnica smiled, recalling the meeting that morning. She had slept badly. She attributed it to the wakeful night spent with friends on the terrace of the villa, and to the capricious journey to the port before sunrise; but she thought with some confusion of the impression made in her mind by the Athenian's figure, which had reappeared several times in her dreams. Without knowing why she associated Actæon's appearance with that of Zeus when he came to earth in mortal form in search of human love.
In her moments of tedium in Athens, when she used to submit with repugnance to caresses for piles of gold, she experienced the vague desire of being loved by a god. She thought of Leda, of Psyche, even of the effeminate Ganymede beloved of the guests on Olympus, and she was in despair at the impossibility of finding a god who should transport her captive through a mysterious forest, or along some roadway leading to the unknown. She longed to contemplate her image in the depths of eyes animated by the splendor of the infinite; to kiss a mouth which served as a portal to supreme wisdom; to feel herself imprisoned in arms possessed of the immense strength of omnipotence. She had experienced a suggestion of this joy in loving her poet, who was sometimes as majestic and sublime as a divine being; but the simplicity of youth prevented her appreciation of that joy, and now, in her maturity, she only met men like those she had known in Athens, some rude and brutal, others effeminate and captious, lacking the severe and sovereign beauty she admired in statues.
She left her bath breathing with happy, childlike thrills, while her hair scattered a light shower at every step.
Odacis called, and three slaves entered; they were those who assisted at their mistress' toilet, the tractatrices in charge of the massage of the body.
Sónnica allowed herself to be manipulated by the three women who rubbed her vigorously, stretching her limbs to keep them supple and agile. Then she seated herself in a marble chair, resting her pink elbows on the dolphins which formed the arms of the seat, and in this position, erect and motionless, she waited for the slaves to proceed with the toilet.
One who was almost a child, wrapped in a mantle of broad stripes, knelt on the floor holding a great engraved bronze mirror in which Sónnica gazed at herself down to her thighs. Another arranged the toilet articles on the tables, and Odacis began to smooth her mistress' splendid hair with ivory combs. Meanwhile, the other slave approached with a bronze patera filled with a gray ointment. It was the bean-flour used by the Athenians of refinement to preserve the skin firm and elastic. She anointed Sónnica's cheeks with this, and then the prominent breasts, the abdomen, the thighs, and knees, leaving nearly the whole body covered by a lustrous, unctuous coating. Where hair had a tendency to grow, she applied dropax, a depilatory paste, composed of vinegar and earth from Cyprus.
Sónnica passively assisted these toilet preparations, which made her momentarily ugly in order that she might reappear each day more beautiful.
Odacis continued combing her hair. She lifted the splendid tresses, burying both hands in the brilliant cascade; she gently wound it over her arms like an enormous golden serpent; then she shook it out, dividing it into small locks to dry it, and then she smoothed it lovingly with the ivory combs piled on the table near at hand, veritable prodigies of art, with the finest of teeth, their upper parts engraved with scenes representing forests, arrogant nymphs in pursuit of stags, and malodorous satyrs giving chase to nude beauties. After drying the hair the coiffeur proceeded to dye it. With a small, long-necked amphora she moistened it with a solution of saffron and gum arabic, and opening a little chest of gold dust she sprinkled it over the ample, silky skein, which assumed the brilliancy of the sun's rays. Then twisting the locks above her forehead around an iron heated over a small brazier, she formed tight curls which covered the Greek woman's brow almost to her eyes; she gathered the mass of hair at the neck, tying it with a red ribbon firmly interbraided, and she curled the crown of the coiffure, imitating the spiral flames of a torch.
Sónnica arose. Two of the slaves approached with a heavy earthen amphora of milk, and dipping a sponge into it, they washed their mistress' body as she stood near the piscina, to remove the bean-paste. The glossy whiteness of her skin reappeared more fresh and moist.
Odacis, with silver tweezers in her hand, carefully inspected her mistress' body, with the attentive and frowning brow of the artist preparing a great work. She had charge of the depilation; her skillful hand won praise for its gentleness as it obstinately sought out the lightest down, implacably destroying it with her tweezers, in deference to the Greek custom of imitating the polished smoothness of the statues.
Sónnica being again seated in her ivory chair, the touching up of the face began. On the table near at hand was a formidable array of bottles, alabaster vases, pots of bronze and of silver, little caskets of ivory and gold, all engraved, brilliant, covered with delicate figures, ornamented with precious stones, containing Egyptian and Hebraic essences, balsams from Arabia, perfumes and intoxicating cosmetics brought by caravans from the heart of Asia to Phœnician ports, and thence to Greece or Carthage, bought for Sónnica by the pilots of her vessels in their venturesome trading voyages.
Odacis painted her face white, and then, moistening a small wooden style with attar of roses, she thrust it into a bronze pot decorated with garlands of lotus and filled with a dark powder. It was the kohol, sold by Egyptian merchants at a fabulous price. The slave applied the point of the style to the Greek's eyelids, dyeing them an intense black, and tracing a fine line about the corners, which made them appear larger and softer.
The toilet was almost complete. The slaves were opening the innumerable bottles and vases arranged in rows upon the marble table, and the atmosphere of the room was laden with costly perfumes—spikenard from Sicily, incense and myrrh from Judea, aloes from India, and cumin from Greece. Odacis took a small glass amphora inlaid with gold, with a conical stopper, terminating in a fine point which served to deposit antimony above the eyes to brighten them, and, after finishing this operation, she presented to her mistress the three ointments for imparting color to the skin in different shades—vermilion, carmine, and the Egyptian red extracted from the body of the crocodile.
The slave began delicately coloring her mistress' body with a fine brush. She produced a pink flush on her cheeks and dainty ears; she marked rose petals on her bosom, and she colored her elbows and the harmoniously curving relievo of her dimpled sides. Then, with Egyptian red, she colored one by one the nails of her fingers and toes, while another slave put on her white sandals with papyrus soles and buckles of gold. Perfumes were showered upon her, each on a different part of the body, so that it might resemble a bouquet of flowers in which various aromas were mingled. Odacis presented the jewel-casket, within which precious stones lay shimmering like restless and glistening fish. The Greek woman's pointed fingers lifted with indifference the heap of collars, rings, and pendants, which, like all Grecian jewelry, were more valuable on account of the workmanship of the artists than for the richness of the material. Scenes from the great poems were reproduced almost microscopically in carnelian cameos, onyx, and agate, and the emeralds, topazes, and amethysts were decorated with profiles of goddesses and heroes.
The slave clasped a necklace of stones of complicated design upon Sónnica's uncovered breast; she loaded her fingers to the tips with rings, and the whiteness of her arms seemed more diaphanous girdled here and there by wide bracelets of gold. To add more expression to the countenance, Odacis decorated her mistress with small patches, and then she proceeded to bind around her body the fascia, or corset of the epoch, a broad woolen band to support the breast. Sónnica, gazing into the burnished bronze, smiled at her statue-like reflection, as beautiful as Venus in repose.
"Which costume, my mistress?" asked Odacis. "Do you wish the tunic with the golden flowers brought from Crete, or the kalásiris veils, transparent as air, which you ordered bought in Alexandria?"
Sónnica could not decide. She would choose in the vestiary; and in the majesty of her unveiled beauty, her papyrus sandals rustling, she walked from her dormitory followed by her slaves.
Meanwhile Actæon was waiting in the library. He had visited great palaces in his travels about the world, he had seen—two years before the earthquake which ruined it—the celebrated Colossus of Rhodes; he was familiar with the Serapeum and the tomb of the great conqueror in Alexandria; he was accustomed to elegance and splendor; yet he could not conceal surprise at this Grecian house in a barbarian land, more luxurious and artistic than those of opulent citizens of Athens.
Guided by a slave, and leaving the garden with its whispering foliage and its cries of exotic birds, he had passed along the colonnade which gave entrance to the villa. First the vestibule with its plinth of mosaic, on which were painted ferocious black dogs with fiery eyes, their fierce and foaming mouths agape, their fangs erect.
Above the door, fastened to a lamp, hung a branch of laurel in honor of the tutelary gods of the house. Next to the somewhat gloomy vestibule, beneath the open sky, like a lung of the house, was the atrium with its four rows of columns supporting the roof and forming an equal number of cloisters, upon which opened the doors of the rooms, their three panels decorated with large-headed nails.
In the centre of the atrium was the impluvium, a rectangular marble tank to catch and hold the waters from the roof. Great terra cotta urns covered with flowers stood upon pedestals between the columns; four marble tables sustained by winged lions surrounded the impluvium, and near it rose a statuette of Love which on festive days threw a spray of water.
Actæon admired the graceful strength of the columns wrought in blue marble to match the socles of the galleries, which imparted to the light of the atrium a diffused radiance, as if the dwelling were submerged in the sea.
Afterward the attendant turned him over to Odacis, the favorite slave, and she ushered him into the peristyle, an inner courtyard much larger than the atrium, which astonished the Greek with its polychrome decoration. The columns were painted red at their bases, and the color changed above into blue and gold on the fluting and capitals, and was dispersed over the trellis-work covering the porticos. In the unroofed part of the peristyle was a deep piscina of transparent water in which fish darted like flashes of golden lightning. Around it were marble benches supported by Hermæ; tables held by dolphins with knotted tails; clumps of roses, between the foliage of which peeped white or terra cotta statuettes in voluptuous positions, and covering the walls of the peristyle, between the doors of the rooms, were great paintings by Grecian artists—Orpheus with his heavy lyre, nude and wearing his Phrygian cap, surrounded by lions and panthers who listened to his songs with humbled heads, stifling their growls; Venus springing from the waves; Adonis allowing himself to be cured of his wounds by the Mother of Love; and other scenes eulogizing the influence of art and beauty.
Actæon was conducted to the bath by two young slaves, and as he emerged from this he again met Odacis, who bade him enter the library beyond the peristyle.
It was a great room paved with mosaic representing the triumph of Bacchus. The young god, beautiful as a woman, nude, and crowned with vines and roses, was riding on a panther, waving his thyrsus. The pictures on the walls illustrated famous passages from the Iliad. The more voluminous books were ranged on shelves, and the smaller ones formed bundles placed in narrow willow baskets lined with wool.
Actæon admired the richness of the library, where he counted more than a hundred volumes. They represented a veritable fortune. The navigators received from Sónnica commissions to bring her whatever notable works they found on their voyages, and the booksellers in Athens remitted to her famous books of entertainment which enjoyed vogue in their city. They were all of papyrus, consisting of strips rolled upon cylinders of wood or bone, each end wrought into an artistically carved umbilicus. The sheets, written only on one side, were impregnated on the other with cedar oil to protect them from moths, and the title of the book, the name of the author, and the index, gleamed in letters of minium and gold on the purple outer wrapping. The copying of these books represented the life work of many men, productions to be acquired only at the cost of great sums of money, and the Greek, with the respect characteristic of his race for art and wisdom, recognized that he was surrounded in the silence of the library by the august shades of many great men, and with veneration he turned from the Homer in its old, time-worn papyrus, and the works of Thales and Pythagoras, to the contemporary poets, Theocritus and Callimachus, whose volumes were unrolled, denoting recent reading.
Actæon's ear caught a faint rustling of sandals in the peristyle, and the square of pale gold thrown on the floor by the light entering the doorway from the courtyard was darkened by a form. It was Sónnica arrayed in a gauzy white tunic. The light behind her marked the artistic lines of her body in the diaphanous cloud of her garment.
"Welcome, Athenian!" she said, in a studied but harmonious voice. "Those who come from over there are ever masters in my house. The banquet to-night shall be in your honor, for no one can be king of the feast and direct conversation like a son of Athens."
Actæon, somewhat stirred by the presence of a beautiful woman enveloped by intoxicating perfumes, began to speak of her house, of his astonishment at its magnificence in that barbarian land, and of the admiration which its owner enjoyed in the city. Everyone he met had spoken to him of Sónnica the rich!
"Yes, they like me; yet sometimes they censure me; but let us speak of you, Actæon; tell me who you are. Your life must be as interesting as that of old Ulysses. Tell me first what new thing there is in Athens."
For a long time the two Greeks maintained an incessant chattering. She was eager to know what courtesans triumphed in the Cerameicus and set the fashions; merry, unconsciously harking back to the life of old, forgetful of her princely opulence in Saguntum, as if she were still in the house in the Street of Tripods, and Actæon one of the poor artists who visited her of an afternoon to discuss affairs of the city, in the intimacy of comrades. She laughed at the latest witticisms of the idlers in the Agora, at the song in vogue the year before, when Actæon left Athens; and with frowning brow and the gravity of a goddess, she listened to a detailed relation of the recent changes of fashion and of the style of coiffure used by the most celebrated hetæræ.
The curiosity of the exiled Athenian being satisfied, she longed to penetrate the adventurous life of her guest, and Actæon told his story simply. Born in Athens, he had been taken to Carthage at twelve years of age. His father, in the service of the African republic, fought with Hamilcar in Sicily. In a village in the interior the selfsame slave attended the son of the Greek mercenary and a lion-cub of Hamilcar, who was at that time only four years of age. It was Hannibal. The Athenian recalled the blows he had often dealt the savage youngster in exchange for bites with which the African surprised him in the midst of their games. The revolt of the mercenaries broke out with those horrors which gave it the name of "the truceless war," and his father, who had remained faithful to Carthage and would not take up arms with his companions, was despite his loyalty crucified by the Carthaginian populace, who, forgetting his wounds received in the service of the Republic, saw in him only a foreigner, a friend of Hamilcar who was hated by the partisans of Hanno. The son miraculously escaped these red-handed reprisals; and Hamilcar's faithful slave smuggled him aboard ship for Athens.
There, under the protection of relatives, he received the education of all young Greeks. He won prizes in the Gymnasium, in wrestling, in running, and in throwing the discus; he learned to ride unbridled horses bareback, balancing himself merely by resting his toe in a groove of the lance; to temper the rudeness of this education he was taught to play the lyre and to sing verses in diverse styles, and being strong of body and mind, he was sent, as were all Athenian youths, to pass his military apprenticeship in the garrisons on the frontier.
The monotony of this existence bored him; it was dull, and he loved pleasure; the blood of his forefathers, soldiers of fortune all, surged through his body; and he ran away from Attica to take charge of a fishing fleet in the Euxine Sea. Then he became a navigator, trading on land and sea; his caravans threaded Asia, through warlike tribes, and among peoples who dwelt in the lethargy of a remote and decadent civilization. He was a powerful personage in the court of some tyrants who admired him on seeing him drink at a gulp an amphora of perfumed wine, and overcome the giants of the guard in a boxing match with the agile dexterity of a true Athenian; and, loaded with riches, he built a palace in Rhodes near the sea, and he gave banquets which lasted three days and nights. The earthquake which flung down the Colossus, also destroyed his fortune; his ships were sunk, his warehouses full of merchandise disappeared beneath the waves, and he began again his pilgrimage roundabout the world; in some places he was a singing master, in others a military instructor of the young men, until, attracted by the Spartan war, he enlisted in the army of Cleomenes, the last Greek hero, accompanying him at the moment in which, vanquished, he embarked for Alexandria. Poor, disappointed, convinced that riches would never return to him, saddened at seeing the whole world filled with the names of Carthage and Rome, while that of Greece was sinking into oblivion, he had come to take final refuge in Saguntum, the small and almost unknown Republic, in search of bread and of peace. Perhaps, in this retired spot, if war did not disturb its calm, he would write the history of his adventures.
Sónnica followed his narrative with interest, fixing upon Actæon a glance of sympathy.
"And you, who have been a hero and a potentate, have come to serve this city as a simple mercenary?"
"Mopsus the archer has promised to give me a post of distinction among his troops."
"That is not enough, Actæon. You would have to live like the other soldiers, spending your life in the Forum taverns, and sleeping on the steps of the Temple of Hercules. No! here is your home! Sónnica will protect you!"
In her sparkling eyes, enlarged by the dark circle traced about them, shone an almost maternal love and sympathy.
The Athenian gazed at her with admiration as she sat erect in her chair like a white cloud in the dimly illuminated library, which, like all Grecian rooms, received no other light than that entering through the doorway.
"Let us go into the garden, Actæon. The afternoon is delicious, and we can imagine ourselves for a moment in the groves of the Academy."
They went out of the house and strolled along a winding avenue bordered by tall laurels, above which peeped the tops of banana trees, irrigated with wine to accelerate their growth. On the terrace two peacocks hailed them with strident calls, strutting along the balustrade and spreading their majestic tails.
Actæon, on beholding his beautiful protectress in the light of the sun, felt a thrill of desire rush through his body. She wore as her only covering a Grecian chiton, an open tunic, fastened with metal clasps over the shoulders, and secured around the waist by a golden girdle. The arms emerged bare from the white wrapping, and the left side of the tunic, closed from the armpit to the knee by small brooches, half opened at each step, revealing her pearly nudity. The material was so delicate that its transparency displayed the outlines of her rosy body, which seemed to float in a veil of woven foam.
"Does my dress astonish you, Actæon?"
"No; I admire you. You seem to me Aphrodite surging from the waves. It is a long time since I have seen the women of Athens disclosing their divine beauty. I am corrupted by my travels, through the rude customs of the barbarians."
"It may happen so. As Herodotus says, nearly all who are not Greeks consider it opprobrious to appear nude.—If you only knew how scandalized the people of this city were in the beginning at my Athenian customs!—as if there existed anything more beautiful in the world than the human form!—as if the nude were not the supreme beauty! I adore Phryne, astonishing with her nude body the old men of the Areopagus; making the thousands of pilgrims gathered on the Eleusinian strand shout with enthusiasm when they saw her white form surge from among the veils, like the moon from behind the clouds. I believe in the promise of her bosom more than in the power of the gods."
"Do you doubt the gods?" asked Actæon, with his fine Athenian smile.
"The same as do you and all those from there. The gods now serve only as themes for artists, and if they are tolerated in old Homer, it is because he was skilled in celebrating their quarrels in graceful verse. No; I do not believe in them; they are as simple and credulous as children, but I love them because they are sane and beautiful."
"In what do you believe, then, Sónnica?"
"I do not know—in something mysterious that surrounds us and animates life; I believe in beauty and love."
She was silent a moment, standing in a pensive attitude; then she continued:
"I hate the barbarians, not because they have no treasures of art, but for the odium they cast on love, which they enchain with all manner of laws and restrictions. They are hypocritical and deformed; they make reproduction a crime, and they hate the nude, hiding the body with all kinds of rags, as if it were an abominable spectacle—when carnal love, the meeting of two bodies, is the sublime love through which we are born, and without which the fount of existence would dry up—extinguishing the world."
"That is why we are great," said Actæon with gravity. "On this account our arts fill the earth, and all bow before the moral grandeur of Greece. We are the people that has known how to honor life making a cult of its origin; we satisfy the impulses of love without hypocrisy, and because of this we understand better than others the needs of the spirit. Intelligence wings more truly when it does not feel the weight of the body tormented by pudicity. We love and study; our gods go naked, with no other adornment than the ray of immortal light upon the forehead. They do not demand blood, like those barbarian divinities enwrapped in clothing which only leaves uncovered their frowning assassin faces; they are as beautiful as human beings, they laugh like them, and their peals of merriment wafted around Olympus gladden the earth."
"Love is the most virtuous sentiment; from it emanates all greatness. Only the barbarians calumniate it, hiding it as a dishonest thing."
"I know a people," said Actæon, "among whom love, the divine fusion of bodies, is looked upon as an impurity. Israel is an amalgamation of miserable tribes, occupying an arid region surrounding a temple of barbaric construction, copied from all peoples. They are hypocrites, rapacious and cruel; on this account they abominate love. If such a people were to attain universal influence like Greece, if it should dominate the world, imposing its beliefs, the eternal light which shines on the Parthenon would go out; humanity would grope in darkness, with the heart dry and the thought dead; the world would be a necropolis, all would be moving corpses, and centuries and more centuries would pass before man would again find the road, coming back to our smiling gods, to the cult of beauty that gladdens life."
Sónnica, listening to the Greek, approached the tall rose bushes and began to pluck the flowers, smelling them with delight. She imagined herself in Athens, in the garden on the Street of Tripods, listening to her poet who had initiated her into the sweet mysteries of art and love. And she gazed sweetly at Actæon, with frank and sincere passion, with the submission of a slave, saying "I love you" with her eyes, as if only awaiting a word to fall into his arms.
The breeze lightly stirred the whole garden. Bits of purple sky inflamed by the setting sun could be seen through the foliage. A mysterious penumbra began to form beneath the trees. The sounds from the fields, the stirring of the people outside the villa in the houses of the slaves, and even the cries of the exotic birds on the terrace seemed to come from a distant world.
Between two clumps of rose bushes stood an image of Priapos carved from the trunk of a tree. The rustic god was smiling with a lewd expression, arching his hairy breast and thrusting his abdomen forward.
Sónnica smiled on seeing the Athenian looking at him.
"You know that it is an ancient custom to place the gardens under the protection of Priapos," said Sónnica. "They say that he frightens away thieves. My slaves believe it firmly, and I keep the god as a symbol of life in the midst of these roses, which are as beautiful as those of Pæstum. The allurements of Priapos complete the sweet charm of abounding Nature."
The two Greeks walked on in silence, with slow step, along an avenue of slender cypresses at the end of which opened a grotto, its rocky walls draped with ivy, allowing a greenish, diffused light to filter through its openings. A white cupid spilled from a shell a stream of water like tender falling tear-drops, caught in an alabaster basin. There the luxurious Sónnica spent the warmer part of the day.
Actæon was conscious of a soft, warm touch upon his shoulder.
"Sónnica!"
Caressing her around her gold-encircled waist, her white and satiny arms knotted themselves responsive about his neck like ivory serpents; her head fell upon the shoulder of the Greek, who, looking down, saw fixed upon him a pair of violet eyes moist with ecstatic emotion.
"You are Athens come back to me!" She murmured sweetly, with bated breath. "When I met you this morning on the steps of Aphrodite's temple I thought you must be Apollo descended to earth. I felt the Olympian fire, impossible to resist. Long have I scorned love, but at last the little god is avenged, and—and—I love you!"
Like a soft glow the beauty of the Greek shone in the twilight of the grotto.
Nine guests were bidden to Sónnica's banquet, and as night closed in they came, some in chariots, others mounted on gaily caparisoned horses, passing between rows of slaves holding lighted torches.
When Sónnica and Actæon entered the festal hall, the guests stood in groups near the purple couches arranged about the curving table, the marble top of which some slaves were washing with sponges and perfumed water. Four enormous bronze lampadaries occupied the corners of the triclinium. From their brackets were suspended numberless little jars of perfumed oil, in which floated wicks, shedding a rich light. Garlands of roses and foliage hung from lamp to lamp, constituting a fragrant border for the banquet hall. Near a door leading to the peristyle stood carved wooden tables piled with gold and silver dishes and the keen-edged carving knives for the use of the slaves.
Alorcus the Celtiberian stood talking with Lachares and three of those young Greeks who so scandalized the Saguntines in the Forum by their effeminate ways. The arrogant barbarian, according to the custom of his race, wore his sword belted to his waist until the banquet began, when he hung it upon the ivory anaclintron of the couch that he might have it ever within reach of his hand.
At the other extreme of the table two citizens of advanced age, and Alcon the pacific Saguntine, with whom Actæon had spoken that morning on the esplanade of the Acropolis, were carrying on a quiet conversation.
The two old men were long-time friends of the house, Greek merchants whom Sónnica had taken as partners in business, and whom she invited to her nocturnal feasts, appreciating the dignified air which they added to these occasions.
As the devoted pair entered the banquet chamber the guests divined their felicity in Sónnica's tender, shining eyes, and in the abandon with which she inclined toward Actæon her blonde head, crowned with roses and violets.
"At last we have a master," murmured Lachares with a tone of jealousy.
"He has been more fortunate than we," replied the Celtiberian resignedly. "But he is an Athenian, and I can understand that Sónnica, the cold hearted, should have surrendered to one of her own people."
Actæon, being presented to the guests, moved about the hall with the self-possession of a potentate enjoying his riches, like a man accustomed to princely splendors—he whom a stroke of fortune had suddenly lifted out of poverty to his old-time condition.
At a signal from Sónnica the guests reclined upon the purple couches which surrounded the table, and four young girls entered the hall bearing on their heads, with the slender grace of canephoræ, little willow baskets filled with rose-crowns. They walked with airy ease, as if gliding over the mosaic to the sound of invisible flutes, and with their delicate girlish hands they crowned the guests with flowers.
Suddenly the steward appeared with an irritated countenance.
"Mistress, Euphobias the parasite is trying to enter."
The guests burst into cries and protests on hearing this.
"Throw him out, Sónnica! He will make us miserable!" shouted the young men, recalling with anger his jeers in the Forum at their dress and manners.
"It is a shame for the city to tolerate that insolent beggar," said the grave citizens.
Sónnica smiled, then suddenly recalling a cruel epigram which the parasite had dedicated to her, and had recited in the Forum a few days before, she said frigidly to the steward:
"Drive him away with a club."
The guests bathed their hands at a lavabo of perfumed water which a slave passed from couch to couch, and Sónnica had given the order to commence the banquet when the steward returned with a rough-knobbed club clutched in his hand.
"I have beaten him, mistress, but he will not go. He suffers the blows, but after each one he works his way a little farther into the house."
"And what does he say?"
"He says that one of Sónnica's feasts is impossible without the presence of Euphobias, and that the blows are a sign of appreciation."
The woman displayed compassion; the guests laughed; and Sónnica gave the order to admit the philosopher, but before the steward had left the room to comply with her command Euphobias had already entered the hall, cringing, humble, but looking at the assembled company with insolent eyes.
"The gods be with you! May joy ever attend you, beautiful Sónnica!"
Turning to the steward he said loftily:
"Brother, now that you see that I get in anyhow, try to wield a less heavy hand in future."
Accompanied by the laughter of the guests he rubbed his forehead on which a lump had begun to rise, and with a corner of his time-worn mantle he wiped off a few drops of blood close to one ear.
"Greeting, lousy one!" the gallant Lachares called to him.
"Away from us!" shouted the other youths.
But Euphobias paid no attention. He smiled at Actæon, seeing him reclining near Sónnica, and his eyes shone with a malicious expression.
"You have arrived where I thought you would. You will master these effeminate creatures who surround Sónnica and who heap insults upon me."
Paying no heed to the mocking retorts of the young gallants he added with a servile smile:
"I trust you will not forget your old friend Euphobias. Now you can set him up to all the wine he wishes in the taverns of the Forum."
The philosopher took the couch at the farther end of the table, and he refused the crown offered him by the slave.
"I have not come for flowers; I have come to eat. I can find plenty of roses merely by taking a stroll in the country; but what I do not find in Saguntum is a crust of bread for a philosopher."
"Are you hungry?" asked Sónnica.
"I am more thirsty than hungry. I have spent the whole day talking in the Forum; they all listened to me, but it never occurred to any one to refresh my throat."
According to the Grecian custom an arbiter bibendi must be chosen, a guest of honor who should propose the toasts, announce the moment for drinking, and direct the conversation.
"Let us choose Euphobias," said Alorcus, with the grave humor of a Celtiberian.
"No!" protested Sónnica. "One night we put him in charge of the banquet for a joke, and we were all drunk before the third course. He proposed a potation at every mouthful."
"Why choose a king?" said the philosopher. "We already have one at Sónnica's side. Let it be the Athenian!"
"Yes, let it be he," said the elegant Lachares, "and may he not allow you to speak during the whole night, insolent parasite!"
In the centre of the table stood a broad bronze crater, over the edges of which peeped a group of nymphs looking at themselves in the oval lake of wine. Each guest had a slave at his back to serve him, and they dipped wine from the crater to fill the glasses of the guests for the first libation. They were murrhine cups, brought from Asia at a great price, of mysterious fabrication, into which entered the dust of certain shells, and myrrh, hardened and tinted. They were white and opaque, like ivory, holding pieces of colored glass embedded, and their mysterious composition gave a voluptuous fragrance to the wine.
Actæon raised himself in his couch to propose the first toast in honor of the chosen divinity.
"Drink to Diana, Athenian," spoke the grave voice of Alcon; "drink to the Saguntine goddess!"
But in the hand which remained free the Athenian felt another, delicate and beringed, clasping it with a warm caress, so he dedicated his libation to Aphrodite, and the young men greeted it with shouts of enthusiasm. Aphrodite was to be the goddess for that night! While the young men thought of the dancers from Gades, the great attraction of the banquet, Sónnica and Actæon, their elbows resting on the cushions, caressed each other with their eyes, while they leaned shoulder to shoulder, close to the edge of the table.
Strong slaves, perspiring from standing over the fires in the kitchens, set upon the table the food for the first course, served in great plates of red Saguntine terra cotta. There were shellfish raw and broiled, all highly spiced. Fresh oysters, mussels, enchinoderms dressed with parsley and mint, asparagus, peppers, lettuce, peacock eggs, tripe seasoned with cumin and vinegar, and fried birds swimming in a sauce of grated cheese, oil, vinegar, and silphium. There was also served oxygarum made in the fisheries of New Carthage—a paste of tunny milt, loaded with salt and vinegar, which excited the palate, stimulating one to drink wine.
The aroma from these dishes floated through the festal hall.
"Talk not to me about the nest of the phœnix!" said Euphobias with his mouth full. "According to the poets, the phœnix bestrews its nest with incense, bay, and cinnamon, but I swear by the gods that I would rather be in Sónnica's triclinium than in that nest!"
"Which does not prevent your dedicating insulting verses to me, you rascal," said the Greek woman, smiling.
"Because I am fond of you, and I protest against your follies. By day I am a philosopher; but at night my stomach compels me to come to you, so that your menials may beat me, and that you may give me something to eat."
The slaves removed the plates of the first course, and brought on the second which consisted of fish and meat. A small roasted wild boar occupied the centre of the table; great pheasants with their plumage laid as a covering upon their cooked flesh, were displayed on plates surrounded by hard-boiled eggs and fragrant herbs; thrushes spitted upon reeds were arranged in form of crowns; hares, on being carved, displayed a stuffing of rosemary and thyme; and wild doves were brought on with quails and thrushes. There were innumerable dishes of fish, reminding the Greeks of the viands of their native land, and between mouthfuls they discussed the glauci from Megara, the eels from Scione, and breams and xiphiae from the coasts of Phalerum and from the Hellespont.
Each guest chose his favorite food from among the different dishes, and regaled his friends with it, presents being carried by slaves from one end of the table to the other. More wines, in sealed and dusty amphoræ, were brought up from the cellars, and overflowed the festal goblets. Wine from Chios, rare and costly, mingled with those from Cæcubum, from Falerno, and from Massico, in Italy, and those from Laurona and from the Saguntine domain. To the bouquet of these liquids was added the aroma of the sauces, into which entered, following the complicated recipes of the Grecian cuisine, silphium, parsley, sesame, fennel, cumin, and garlic.
Sónnica barely touched her food; she neglected the successive plates, heaped with presents from her guests, to smile at Actæon.
"I love you," she whispered. "I feel as if a Thessalian magus had cast a spell over me. My whole being responds to the throb of love. Do you see these fishes? I am afraid to eat them; I feel that I would be committing a sacrilege, because roses and fishes are dedicated to Venus, the mother of our joy. I only wish to drink—to drink profoundly. I feel within me a fire which caresses, yet consumes me."
The guests gormandized, rendering tribute to Sónnica's cook, an Asiatic, purchased in Athens by one of her navigators. He had cost her almost the price of a villa; but they considered the money well spent, and they admired the art with which his meditations in a corner of the kitchen produced these astonishing combinations, afterward executed by the other slaves—above all that happy invention of a mild sauce of dates and honey for the roasts. With such a slave it were possible to enjoy one's food throughout the whole of life and to ward off death for many years.
The second course had ended. The guests were lying surfeited on their couches, loosening their garments. The slaves served them with wine in horn-shaped flagons of alabaster, which permitted a slender stream to gurgle from its spout, so that they need not lift themselves to drink. The purple drapery of the couches was stained with wine. The great lampadaries in the corners, with their tapers of perfumed oil, seemed to glow more faintly in the dense atmosphere charged with vapor from the steaming viands. The garlands of roses hanging in festoons from the lamps wilted in the heavy atmosphere. Through the open door the guests caught glimpses of the columns of the peristyle, and of a strip of dark blue sky in which twinkled many stars.
The pacific Alcon rising up in his couch, smiled with the amiability of mild intoxication, gazing at the splendor of the firmament.
"I drink to the beauty of our city!" he said, raising the horn filled with wine.
"To the Grecian Zacynthus!" shouted Lachares.
"Yes, let Saguntum be Greek!" answered his friends.
The conversation turned upon the great festival which, at Sónnica's initiative, the Greeks of Saguntum would celebrate in honor of Minerva on gathering the harvest. The Panathenaic festivals should end with a procession like that which took place in Athens, and which Phidias had immortalized in marble in his famous friezes. The young men spoke with enthusiasm of the horses they would ride, and of the contests for which they were training by persistent exercise. Sónnica patronized the festivals with her immense wealth, and she wished to make these as famous as that one which Athens celebrated on the dedication of the Parthenon.
The Saguntine youths would race outside the walls in the morning to demonstrate that they were as clever as the Celtiberian horsemen; the more pacific would contest in the Forum, lyre in hand, to win the crown offered to the one who should hymn the poems of Homer most creditably; afterward the procession would reveal all its magnificence through the streets of the city, climbing up to the Acropolis; and in the afternoon the race of the flaming torch would take place to divert the people, who would hiss at him who let his torch go out, and would whip up him who traveled slowly to protect the flame.
"But do you really believe in Minerva?" Euphobias asked of Sónnica.
"I believe in what I see," she replied. "I believe in spring, in the resurrection of the verdant fields, in the grain which springs from the ground to nourish man from its golden bearded heads; the flowers, which are the incense-bearers of the earth; and, above all the goddesses, I love Athene for the wisdom with which she endows man and makes him divine, and I love Minerva for her bounty which maintains them."
The slaves laid the third course on the table, and the guests, half-inebriated, raised themselves in their couches to look at the little baskets of fruit, the plates covered with pastry toasted over the fire in the Cappadocian style; buns made of sesame flour, filled with honey, and browned in the oven; and cakes of cheese stuffed with stewed fruits.
Small amphoræ containing the choicest wines, brought from the uttermost ends of the world by Sónnica's ships, were uncorked. Wine from Byblus in Phœnicia saturated the atmosphere with a fragrance as penetrating as bottles of perfume; that from Lesbos which on being poured gave forth a ravishing odor of roses, and, in addition to these, cups were filled with cordials from Erythrea and Heraclea, strong and spiritous, and those from Rhodes and Chios, prudently mixed with sea-water to aid the digestion.
Some slaves, to excite again the appetite of the guests, and to make them drink, offered plates of locusts cured in brine; radishes with vinegar and mustard, toasted garbanzos, and olives, prized for their size and flavor, swimming in a piquant sauce.
Actæon could eat nothing, diverted by Sónnica, who, leaving her epiclintron, pressed against him, rubbing her cheek upon the Athenian's with mingling breath. Thus they remained in silence, each watching the image reflected from the pupils of the other.
"Let me kiss you on the eyes," murmured Sónnica, "they are the windows of the soul, and I imagine that through them my caress will penetrate to the depths of your being."
The arrogant Alorcus, grave as all Celtiberians when intoxicated, spoke of the coming festival as he gazed into his empty cup. He had five horses in the city, the finest his tribe could furnish, and if the magistrates would allow him to take part in the rejoicings, despite his being a foreigner, the Saguntines would have a chance to admire the strength and swiftness of his beautiful coursers. The crown should fall to him, unless some unexpected event summoned him from the city.
Lachares and his elegant friends proposed to contest for the prize in singing, and their effeminate hands, slender and beringed, moved nervously over the table as if already thrumming the lyre, while their painted lips sang Homeric verses in subdued tones. Euphobias, lying on his back on his couch, gazed aloft with dreamy eyes, with no other earthly desire than to reach forth his glass and call for wine; but Alcon and the Greek merchants became impatient at the slowness of the banquet.
"The dancers! Let the daughters from Gades come!" they called with tremulous voices, the fiery spark of intoxication glowing in their eyes.
"Yes; let the dancing girls come!" cried Euphobias rousing from his stupor. "I want to see how this honorable people disturbs its digestion, which is the best gift to man, by the lewd steps of the daughters of Hercules."
Sónnica made a sign to her steward, and in a moment the joyous sound of flutes was heard in the peristyle.
"The auletai!" shouted the guests.
Four slender girls, violet-crowned, marched into the triclinium, wearing a chiton open from waist to ankle, displaying the left leg at every step, holding to their mouths the double aulos, their agile fingers playing over the holes of the instrument.
Standing in the space enclosed by the curve of the table, they began a sweet melopœia, which caused the guests to sit up in their couches and to smile placidly. Most of them recognized the flute players as old acquaintances, and swinging their heads in time with the music, they watched with avid eyes the outlines of their bodies which swayed rhythmically from the movement of their dancing feet.
Several times the flutists changed the tune and measure, but at the end of an hour the guests became bored.
"We are used to all this," protested Lachares; "they are the same flutists who always play at your banquets, Sónnica. Since you have fallen in love you forget your friends. Give us something else! Let us see the dancers!"
"Yes, let the dancing girls come!" chorused the young men.
"Have patience," said the Greek woman, lifting her head for an instant from Actæon's breast; "the dancers will appear, but not until the end of the banquet when I am overcome with sleep. I know you well, and I can guess what the finish of the feast will be. First I wish you to see a little slave who has learned from the Grecian mariners tricks like those of celebrated Athenian performers."
Before the slave entered, the guests turned in alarm toward the farther end of the table. A beast-like growling arose from beneath it. Euphobias had fallen from his couch, and with his head on the mosaic was disgorging his dinner, accompanied by a stream of wine.
"Give him laurel leaves!" called the prudent Alcon. "There is nothing better to dissipate drunkenness."
The slaves compelled him almost by force to chew the leaves, paying no attention to the philosopher's protests.
"I am not drunk," shouted Euphobias. "It is the hunger which persecutes me. Most of the time I can find no bread, and when I am so fortunate as to sit at a table like Sónnica's, the food which I eat escapes me."
"Say rather the wine which you drink escapes you," replied Sónnica, resting her head again on Actæon's breast.
The contortionist had reappeared before the table, and had greeted her mistress by touching her hands to her face. She was a girl of about fourteen, with yellowish skin, wearing a pair of red trunks. Her nervous and agile limbs, and her lean, undeveloped chest, made her look like a boy. The elder guests smiled, stirred by her fresh and almost masculine beauty.
She uttered a shout, and doubling over with elastic vigor stood on her hands, and with feet in the air and her head almost touching the floor, she began to run swiftly about the triclinium. Then, with a powerful spring of her arms, she leaped upon the table, and trotted on her hands among the confusion of plates, amphoræ, and cups, without upsetting them.
The guests applauded with enthusiasm. The two Greek merchants offered her their goblets, pinching her cheeks while she drank, and passing their hands caressingly over her back.
"Lachares," said the philosopher to his aristocratic enemy, "why have you and your companions not brought your beautiful slave boys who serve you as supports in the Forum?"
"Sónnica will not allow it," replied the young gallant, pleased at the question, not suspecting the irony in Euphobias' words. "She is a superior woman, but this is the only one of the refined customs of Athens which she declines to tolerate. She believes in Jupiter and Leda; but she spits upon the beautiful Ganymede. She is not a full-fledged Athenian."
A double row of broad, sharp swords was placed along the floor by a group of slaves, so that the contortionist might show her greatest feat. The flutists began to play a slow, solemn melody, and the contortionist, again standing head downward, began to walk between the swords without disturbing them or touching their sharp edges. The guests, cup in hand, followed her course anxiously through the forest of keen steel blades, which at her slightest wavering would penetrate her body. She paused near a sword, extended one arm, and sustaining herself on a single hand she bent the elbow until she kissed the floor; then she stiffened the muscles, raising herself back to her first position, and throughout this whole maneuvre the cutting edge grazed her breast without even abrading the skin.
When the girl finished her act the guests applauded vigorously. The two old men flung their tunics around her, while her malicious, boyish face peeped forth and sniffed the foods and sweetmeats.
"But, Sónnica," protested Lachares, "when did the beautiful Greek ever forget her friends like this? Athenian, you have maddened her with your love; now intercede for us, and ask that the daughters of Gades present themselves quickly!"
Sónnica appeared to be sleeping upon Actæon's breast, spellbound by his close, warm, throbbing heart.
"Bid them enter——let my guests do what they wish——only leave us in peace!"
Footsteps, giggling, and whispering were heard in the peristyle, and the Gaditanian dancers entered the triclinium, crowding each other like a stampeding flock.
They were girls of small stature, with supple, agile limbs; their skin a pale amber, their eyes large and luminous; their hair black; their bodies floating in vapory veils, alluring and deceptive in their semi-transparency. They wore on their breasts and on their arms and ankles strands of coins and amulets which rung with merry tinkle at the slightest movement, and they stared boldly at the guests like a flock accustomed to such feasts, who traveled from banquet to banquet, seeing men only in their hours of intoxication.
The ruler of the band, a wrinkled, parchment-faced old man with an insolent stare, was dressed like them in feminine veils, his cheeks painted, his eyes encircled with black, having great hoops in his ears, and a cynical leer on his vermilion lips, ready for trade in the most infamous traffic.
Euphobias, indifferent to the charms of the dancing girls, looked at him with amazement, wondering to what sex belonged those skeleton arms peeping from beneath the veils, painted white, and weighted down with jewels.
"Brother, are you a man or a woman?" the philosopher gravely enquired.
"I am the father of all these flowers," replied the eunuch with a squeaking voice, showing as he smiled his repulsive, toothless gums.
Three of the women, squatting on the floor, began to fillip their castanets with lively clacking, while another beat with her hands on a globe-bottomed timbrel tucked under her left arm.
The eunuch rapped on the floor with his staff, and instantly four pairs of dancers whisked into the centre of the triclinium, and began to swing to the sound of clamorous barbaric music played by their companions. They danced with stately step, holding themselves majestically erect, spreading their arms as if swimming in space, their brown bodies wheeling in slow spirals, seeming to float on the waves of transparent foam which enwrapped them. Gradually their movements accelerated; they gracefully extended their bodies, elevating their firm chests, outlining their contours among the veils—contortions in which the trunk revolved on the hips, a whirl of forms enclosed in white and floating drapery, which as it flew into a thousand folds with voluptuous undulations, fanned up the flames of the lamps.
Suddenly, at a signal from the old crone, the music stopped, and the dancing ceased.
"More! More!" shouted the guests, sitting up in their couches with excitement.
It was merely a halt to change the time and to evoke applause by taking a brief rest. The music assumed a gay and noisy rhythm; the old eunuch marked time on the floor with the beating staff; he uttered a prolonged lament, sad, yet with a mild sweetness, which did not seem to come from his infected mouth; and then followed slow dreamy strophes of love with words of double meanings, which acted like aphrodisiacs, and were greeted with a roar of enthusiasm.
The dancers sprang into the centre of the triclinium, whirling swiftly, as if possessed of a fever. Each song served as a lash further to excite their nerves, and their bare feet tripped over the mosaic like snow-white birds, or rose in gentle flight, trailing clouds of gauze, displaying well modeled limbs with tinkling ornaments which scattered silvery tones. Their gently curving abdomens seemed to assume a separate existence, moving like restless animals over their bodies which they held in sacerdotal rigidity, contracting in circular waves, forming a whirlpool of voluptuous undulations, of which the umbilicus was the rosy centre. They accompanied the dance with incessant snapping of fingers. Gathering the gauzy draperies beneath their arms and adjusting them around their hips, they moved their amphoral curves with seductive rhythm, sighing langourously, with bowed heads, as if enchanted by the contemplation of their own beauty. Suddenly the music grew fainter, as if drawing away, and the dancers, their feet together and limbs half opened, descended in a slow spiral, with gentle undulations, until they touched the floor; the instant their callipygian charms grazed the mosaic, they recoiled like suddenly awakened serpents, and the castanets clacked and the timbrel beat louder, accompanied by the howls of the musicians who animated them with lascivious words and exclamations of supreme abandon.
The guests, red with emotion, their eyes sparkling and their mouths dry, had rushed into the centre of the triclinium, interrupting the dance, mixing with the couples and grasping them. Euphobias lay snoring at the foot of his couch. Sónnica had disappeared long before, leaving the triclinium, supported by a slave without lifting her head from Actæon's shoulder.
The veils of the dancing girls fell to the foot of the table; they devoured the sweetmeats and fruits, they drank from the amphoræ, plunged their heads into the crater of the nymphs, and laughed on seeing their faces bespattered with wine. The eunuch continued singing and pounding furiously on the floor to mark the rhythm for his musicians. In vain! The girls who tried to dance could not escape from the hands of the guests, who at every turn slapped them on their buttocks and tore off their veils. The young men rolled at the foot of the lamps, maddened by these bacchantes wise in perversion, reared in a port to which navigators brought both the refinements and the corruptions of the entire world. Alorcus the Celtiberian, brutalized by his enthusiasm, walked around the triclinium making a display of his strength by sustaining in his sinewy hands two dancing girls, who screamed with fright, while outside could be noted in the darkness of the peristyle the movement of the slaves, men and women, from the kitchens, creeping near to enjoy from without the spectacle of the bacchanal.
It was not yet dawn when Actæon awoke, wondering, no doubt, at the soft couch and at the perfumes of the dormitory. Sónnica was lying beside him, and by the light of a lamp hanging near the door he could see a smile of felicity flitting over her lips.
After the intoxication of the night the Athenian felt a vehement desire to breathe the fresh, open air. He was stifling where he was, in Sónnica's room, sunk down in the couch that seemed to burn with the fire of their recent passion, near the form, which now lay inert and with no other sign of life than the gentle sighs which inflated her bosom.
The Greek softly tiptoed out to the peristyle. The lamps were still burning in the triclinium, and an insufferable vapor of viands, wines, and sweaty bodies floated through the doorway. He saw the guests lying on the floor among the snoring women. Euphobias had awakened from his drunken sleep, and, occupying the place of honor, Sónnica's couch, was forging for himself the illusion of being master of the villa. Wrapped in his tattered mantle he was compelling two sleepy dancing girls to dance, contemplating their nude flesh with a disdainful stare like a man who considers himself above carnal desires.
As Actæon appeared in the triclinium some slaves fled, fearing lest they should be punished for their curiosity. Not wishing to be seen by the philosopher the Greek went out of the house seeking the cool garden. There he noticed the same flight before his steps. Embracing couples fled along the avenues; from behind the clumps of foliage arose exclamations of surprise as he approached, and in the dissipating shadows of the night the garden seemed animated by a mysterious life beneath its leafy bowers.
They were slaves who, excited by the feast, continued beneath the open sky the scenes of the triclinium.
The Greek smiled, reflecting that the feast was destined to augment his mistress' wealth.
"Let them enjoy themselves in peace. To disturb them would damage Sónnica's interests."
He passed out of the garden so as not to interfere with the joy of the miserable flock which, forgetting every trouble, sought each other there in the dim light of dawn.
He crossed Sónnica's immense dominions, through groves of fig trees and extensive olive orchards, until suddenly he found himself in the highway of the Serpent. It was deserted. In the distance he heard the galloping of a horse and saw in the bluish light of dawn a rider who was undoubtedly making for the port.
As he drew near Actæon recognized him in spite of his head being covered by the hood of a war mantle. It was the Celtiberian shepherd. The Greek dashed into the centre of the roadway and grasped the horse by the bridle, while the rider, checked in his race, leaned back, tugging at the knife which he wore in his belt.
"Be calm!" said Actæon in a low voice. "If I stop you it is to say that I have recognized you. You are Hannibal, the son of the great Hamilcar! Your disguise may serve you among the Saguntines, but your boyhood friend knows you."
The African bent his head forward with its bushy mass of hair, and his imperious eyes made out the Greek in the dim light.
"Is it you, Actæon? When I met you so many times yesterday I knew that you would finally recognize me. What are you doing here?"
"I am living in the house of Sónnica the rich."
"I have heard of her, a Greek as famous for her beauty and her talent as the courtesans of Athens. I was also desirous of knowing her, and I think I should have loved her if it were a man's mission to chase after women. And are you doing nothing else?"
"I am a soldier in the pay of the city."
"You, the son of Lysias, the confidential captain of Hamilcar! You, a man educated in the Prytaneum of Athens, in the service of a city of barbarians and merchants!"
Hannibal was silent for a moment as if wondering at the conduct of the Greek. At last he added resolutely:
"Mount behind me on my horse! Come with me! In the port a Carthaginian ship, loading with silver, is waiting for me. I go to New Carthage to place myself at the head of my troops. Days of glory are coming, an immense and sublime enterprise, like that of the giants when, heaping mountain on mountain, they scaled your Olympus. Come! You are the friend of my childhood; I knew you before Hasdrubal and Mago, those sons of Hamilcar, whom the glorious captain gave me for brothers, calling all three of us 'my lion's brood.' I know you. You are astute and brave like your father; at my side you will conquer riches. Who knows but that you may reign as king in some fair land when, imitating Alexander, I divide my conquests among my captains!"
"No, Carthaginian," said Actæon gravely. "I do not hate you; I remember our early years with pleasure; but I will never go with you. Your lineage prevents it, the past record of your nation, and the bloody shade of my father."
"Nationality is but a fiction; 'the people' a pretext for making war. What matters it to you whether you serve Carthage or any other republic, since you are a Greek? If my own people should abandon me I would fight for any country. We are men of war; we fight for glory, power, and riches; the needs of our people only serve to justify our victory and our despoiling of the enemy. I hate the merchants of Carthage, pacific and stuck to their shops, as much as I hate the proud Romans. Come, Actæon, since we have met, follow me! Fortune goes with me."
"No, Hannibal; here shall I remain. Seeing your African soldiers I should remember the mob that crucified Lysias."
"That was an unavoidable crime, a mad deed of that truceless war to which the mercenaries impelled us. My father lamented it a thousand times, remembering his faithful Lysias. With my protection I will make amends for that injustice of Carthage."
"I will not follow you, Hannibal. I have bid farewell to war and booty. I prefer to grow old here in this sweet and tranquil life, at the side of my Sónnica, loving peace like any one of those Saguntines who dwells in the merchants' ward."
"Peace? Peace?"
A strident and brutal shout of laughter, like that which Actæon had heard on the steps of Aphrodite's temple when the Roman legates were embarking, broke the silence of the roadway.
"Listen well, Actæon," said the African, recovering his gravity, "the proof that I still remember my boyhood affection for you lies in the frankness with which I speak my mind. Only to you, understand it well! If, sleeping in my tent, I should learn on awaking that what is in my mind had escaped in words, I would stab the sentinel who guarded my sleep. You speak of peace! Actæon, awake! If you think of growing old in tranquility in any part of the world, flee with that Greek woman whom you love, far, far away! Where I am, there shall be no peace until I have become the sovereign of the world! War marches ahead of my footsteps; he who will not submit to me must die or become my slave!"
The Greek comprehended the significance of the threat.
"Remember, Hannibal, that this city is Rome. The Republic has taken it for an ally and protects it."
"Do you imagine that I fear Rome? If I hate Saguntum it is because she is proud of her alliance, and that she scorns and forgets me, in spite of my being near. She fancies herself secure because that far-away Republic protects her, and she laughs at me, though I reign over all the Peninsula as far as the Ebro, and am encamped almost at her very gates. She antagonizes the Turdetani, who are my allies, as are all the Iberian tribes, and within her walls she beheads the citizens who love me, those who were friends of the great Hamilcar. Ah, blind and vainglorious city! How dear shall it cost thee to live near to Hannibal without knowing him!"
Turning about in his saddle he glared with menacing eyes at the Acropolis of Saguntum, which stood forth above the fog of the early morn.
"You could scarcely lay siege to her ally before Rome would fall upon you!"
"Let her come!" replied the African arrogantly. "That is what I want, I hate peace! I will not submit to seeing Carthage subdued while there exist men like me and my friends. Either Rome or Africa! Let the final clash come! The sooner the better, the supreme struggle; and let that nation which is left standing be ruler of the world! I hate the rich of my country who live content in the shame of defeat because it enables them to traffic calmly and to cram their vaults with silver. Those are the wretches who, after our defeat in Sicily, dared to dream of abandoning Carthage and of moving wholesale to the islands of the Great Sea to live in tranquility. They are Carthaginians indeed; true sons of Phœnicia, with no other conception of glory than trade, nor other aspiration than to find new ports where they can market their wares! We Barcas are Libyans; we descend from the gods; like them we have greatness of thought; we must be masters, or die! Those merchants do not understand that it is not enough to be rich; that one must dominate and instill fear; and they formed in Carthage a peace-party, which embittered my father's life by defeats, and they leave me with no other resources than those that I can procure on the Peninsula. They do not know the Barcas, despite the fact that we struggle to make Carthage a world power! My father, when he lost Sicily, foresaw the future extinction of our nation, and he wished to prevent it. We had lost a great part of our ancient commerce. We needed an army to defend us from ambitious Rome, and we did not have it. The citizens of Carthage are good, at the best, to fight on their own soil. The merchant cannot bear the weight of arms nor endure marches for months and years through hostile countries. The profit derived from booty conquered with blood, he can win more easily standing behind his bales of goods, and as he loves money he does not wish to pay it out to foreign soldiers. That is why Hamilcar brought us to the Peninsula, and here we have given Carthage new ports and markets, and the Barcas have an army gathered together by their own efforts. Little does it matter that the Carthaginian Senate, lovers of peace, refuse to send us soldiers. The Iberian tribes loved my father after putting his bravery to the test, and they will rise in arms at the voice of the Barcas against whatever enemy we may designate."
Hannibal turned his gaze toward the distant mountains, as if he could behold the innumerable barbarian tribes who lived behind them scratching the earth, or pasturing their flocks. "Hamilcar fell," he said sadly, "just as he was beginning to see his dreams realized in a great army with which to enter anew into strife with Rome, with riches of his own to carry on the war without need of assistance from the African merchants. Hasdrubal, the handsome husband of my sister, frittered away eight years on succeeding to his authority. He was a good governor, but a timid commander. Perhaps it was Baal, our savage god, who guided the arm of his assassin that he might be succeeded by another capable of exterminating the eternal enemy of Carthage. That one shall be I! Listen well, Greek! You are the only one who shares my thought. The moment for fighting the final battle has come. Soon shall Rome know that there exists a Hannibal who defies her by taking possession of Saguntum."
"You have scant power for that, African. Saguntum is strong, and I, who come from New Carthage, have seen there nothing but the elephants, the fragments of the army which your father brought, and the Numidian cavalry which your friends have sent from Africa."
"You forget the Iberians and the Celtiberians, the whole Peninsula, which will rise bodily and flock to the taking of Saguntum. The country is poor, and the city is overstocked with riches. I have noted it well. There is enough in it to pay an army for entire years, and even the Lusitanian tribes from the coast of the Great Sea will come attracted by the hope of loot and urged on by the hatred of rude natives for a city, opulent and civilized, where dwell their exploiters. It will be no great task for Hannibal to take possession of a republic of farmers and merchants."
"And after you become master, what then?"
The African answered nothing, but shrugged his shoulders with an enigmatic smile.
"You are silent, Hannibal. But after you are master of Saguntum you will have gained nothing. Rome will hurl her thunder at you for violating her treaties, and the Carthaginian Senate will curse you; it will set a price upon your head; it will order your soldiers to disobey you; and you will die crucified, or you will wander about the world like a fugitive slave."
"No! Fire of Baal!" shouted the chief arrogantly. "Carthage will attempt nothing against me; she will accept war with Rome, even though to-day she may not wish it. I have there innumerable partisans of the Barcas; the populace which loves war, because it yields cargoes of loot for distribution; the people of the out-lying districts, whose enthusiasm I keep at white heat by sending them riches sacked on the Peninsula, after having paid my troops. Hamilcar and Hasdrubal did the same. They would be ready to cut off the heads of the rich if anything were attempted against Hannibal. Since following my father for nine years, I have not returned to Carthage, but the people adore my name. Even those of the peace-party will follow me to war, if to war I drag them."
"And how will you conquer Rome?"
"I know not," said Hannibal with his mysterious smile. "I harbor a world of thoughts which would provoke the laughter of my friends if I should relate them. I see myself like a Titan scaling immense mountains, following the course of the eagle, ploughing through the snow, climbing to the very sky to fall upon my enemy with greater force. Ask me no more; I know nothing further. My will says, 'I desire,' and that is enough—I shall carry it through!"
Hannibal was silent, wrinkling his brows as if fearing he had said too much.
It was now daylight. Women with baskets on their heads were passing along the road. Two slaves carrying a great amphora hanging from a pole swung between their shoulders, stopped near them a moment to rest. The African patted his horse's neck as if preparing to leave.
"For the last time, Greek, will you come?"
Actæon shook his head.
"I know you too well to beg you to forget that you have seen Hannibal. You are astute. You know that what we have spoken here must be swallowed in the silence of the fields, and must be repeated to no one. Be happy in your new love, and live in peace, since, though born to soar as an eagle, you choose to stay here in a barnyard. If ever you oppose me as an enemy and contend against me, I will not crucify you; you shall not become my slave. I love you, although you will not follow me. I do not forget that you were the first who taught me to hurl a dart. May Baal guard you, Actæon! My men await me at the port."
His mantle floating in the breeze, he started on a gallop, raising a cloud of dust, scattering the country people and slaves, who scurried to the sides of the road to give him passage.