Georg Ebers
The Emperor. Complete
Bishop Eumenes, who had been elected in the spring Patriarch of the Christians of Alexandria, visited her oftener than usual during the summer when Paulina lived in her suburban villa. Paulina, it is true, had fancied she could do without his help, and that she could and must carry her task through to the end by herself; but the worthy old man had felt sympathetically drawn to the poor ill-guided child, and sought to soothe and calm her mind and show her the goal, towards which Paulina desired to lead her, in all its beauty. After such discourses Arsinoe would be softened and felt inclined to believe in God and to love Christ, but no sooner had her protectress called her again into the school-room and put the very same things before her in her own way than the girl’s heartstrings drew close again; and when she was desired to pray she raised her hands, indeed, but out of sheer defiance, she prayed in spirit to the Greek gods.
Frequently Paulina received visits from heathen acquaintances in rich dresses and the sight of them always reminded Arsinoe of former days. How poor she had been then! and yet she had always had a blue or a red ribbon to plait in her hair and trim the edge of her peplum. Now she might wear none but white dresses and the least scrap of colored ornament to dress her hair or smarten her robe was strictly forbidden. Such vain trifles, Paulina would say, were very well for the heathen, but the Lord looked not at the body but at the heart.
Ah! and the poor little heart of the hapless child could not offer a very pleasing sight to the Father in Heaven, for hatred and disgust, sadness, impatience, and blasphemy seethed in it from morning till night. This young nature was surely formed for love and contentment, and both had left her weeping. Still Arsinoe never ceased to yearn for them.
When November had begun and another attempt to run away during their move back to the town-house had failed, Paulina tried to punish her by never speaking a word to her for a fortnight, and forbidding even the slave-women to speak to her. In these two weeks the talkative girl was reduced almost to desperation, and she even thought of throwing herself off the roof down into the court-yard. But she clung too dearly to life to carry this horrible project into execution. On the first of December Paulina once more spoke to her, forgave her ingratitude, as usual in a long, kind speech, and told her how many hours she had spent in praying for her enlightenment and improvement.
Paulina spoke the truth, and yet but half the truth, for she had never felt a real love for Arsinoe, and had now for a long time watched her come and go with actual dislike; but she required her conversion in order that the warmest wish of her heart might find fulfilment. It was for the happiness of her daughter, and not for the sake of her recalcitrant companion, that she prayed for her enlightenment and never ceased in her efforts to open the callous heart of her adopted child to the true faith.
In the afternoon preceding that morning when Pollux had at last knocked at the Christian widow’s door, the sun shone with particular brilliancy, and Paulina had allowed the girl to go out with her. They spent some little time with a Christian family who dwelt on the shore of Lake Mareotis, and so it fell out that they did not return home till late in the evening. Arsinoe had long learnt, while she sat apparently gazing at the ground, to keep her eyes out of the carriage and to see everything that was going on around her; and as the chariot turned into their own street she spied in the distance a tall man who looked like her long-wept Pollux. She fixed her eyes upon him, and had some difficulty in keeping herself from calling out aloud, for he it was who walked slowly down the street. She could not be mistaken, for the torches of two slaves who were walking in front of a litter had broadly lighted up his face and figure.
He was not lost—he was living, and seeking her. She could have shouted aloud for joy, but she did not stir till Paulina’s chariot was standing still in front of her house. The door-keeper bustled out as usual to help his mistress to step out of the high-slung vehicle. Thus Paulina for an instant turned her back, and in that moment Arsinoe sprang out of the opposite side of the chariot, and was flying down towards the street where she had seen her lover. Before Paulina could discover that she was gone the runaway found herself in the midst of the throng which, when the day’s work was over, poured out from the workshops and factories on their way home.
Paulina’s slaves, who were sent out at once to seek the fugitive, had to return home this time empty-handed; but Arsinoe, on her part, had not succeeded in finding him she sought. For an hour she looked round and about her in vain; then she perceived that her search must be unsuccessful, and wondered how she might find her way to his parents’ house. Rather than return to her benefactress she would have joined the roofless crew who passed the night on the hard marble pavement of the forecourts of the temple.
At first she rejoiced in the sense of recovered liberty, but when none of the passers-by could tell her where Euphorion, the singer, lived, and some young men followed her and addressed her with impudent speeches, terror made her turn aside into a street which led to the Bruchiom; her persecutors had not even then ceased to follow her, when a litter, escorted by lictors and several torch-bearers, was carried past. It was Julia, the kind wife of the prefect, who sat in it; Arsinoe recognized her at once, followed her, and reached the door of her residence at the same moment as she herself. As the matron got out of her litter she observed the girl who placed herself modestly, but with hands uplifted in entreaty, at the side of her path. Julia greeted the pretty creature in whom she had once taken a motherly interest with affectionate sympathy, beckoned Arsinoe to her, smiled as she listened to her request for a night’s shelter, and led her with much satisfaction to her husband.
Titianus was ill; still he was glad once more to see the ill-fated palace-steward’s pretty daughter; he listened to her story of her flight with many signs of disapprobation, but kindly withal, and expressed the warmest satisfaction at hearing that the sculptor Pollux was still in the land of the living.
The grand and lordly bed in one of the strangers’ rooms in the prefect’s house had held many a more illustrious guest, but never one whose sleep was brightened by happier dreams than the poor orphaned “little fugitive,” who, no longer ago than yesterday, had cried herself to sleep.
CHAPTER XXIV
Arsinoe was up betimes on the following morning; much embarrassed by all the splendor that surrounded her, she walked up and down her room thinking of Pollux. Then she stopped to take pleasure in her own image displayed in a large mirror which stood on a dressing-table, and between whiles she compared the couch, on which she lay clown again at full length, with those in Paulina’s house. Once more she felt herself a prisoner, but this time she liked her prison, and presently, when she heard slaves passing by her room, she flew to the door to listen, for it was just possible that Titianus might have sent to fetch Pollux, and would allow him to come to see her. At last a slave-woman came in, brought her some breakfast, and desired her from Julia to go into the garden and look at the flowers and aviaries till she should be sent for.
Early that morning the news had reached the prefect that Antinous had sought his death in the Nile, and it had shocked him greatly, less on account of the hapless youth than for Hadrian’s sake. When he had given the proper officials orders to announce the melancholy news and to desire the citizens to give some public expression of their sympathy with the Emperor’s sorrow, he gave audience to the Patriarch Eumenes.
This venerable man, ever since the transactions which he had conducted—with reference to the thanksgiving of the Christians for the safety of the Emperor after the fire, had been one of the most esteemed friends of Titianus and Julia. The prefect discussed with the Patriarch the inauspicious effects that the death of the young fellow might be expected to have on the Emperor, and as a result, on the government, although the favorite had had no qualities of mind to distinguish him.
“Whenever Hadrian,” continued Titianus, “would give his unresting brain an hour’s relaxation, and release himself from disappointment and vexation and the severe toil and anxiety of which his life is overfull, he would go out hunting with the bold youth or would have the handsome, good-hearted boy into his own room. The sight of the Bithynian’s beauty delighted his eye, and how well Antinous knew how to listen to him—silent, modest and attentive! Hadrian loved him as a son, and the poor fellow clung to his master in return with more than a son’s fidelity; his death itself proved it. Caesar himself said to me once; ‘In the midst of the turmoil of waking life, when I see Antinous a feeling comes over me as if a beautiful dream stood incorporate before my eyes.’
“Caesar’s grief at losing him must indeed be great,” said the Patriarch.
“And the loss will add to the gloom of his grave and brooding nature, render his restless scheming and wandering still more capricious, and increase his suspiciousness and irritability.”
“And the circumstances under which Antinous perished,” added Eumenes, “will afford new ground for his attachment to superstitions.”
“That is to be feared. We have not happy days before us; the revolt in Judaea, too, will again cost thousands of lives.”
“If only it had been granted to you to assume the government of that province.”
“But you know, my worthy friend, the condition I am in. On my bad days I am incapable of commanding a thought or opening my lips. When my breathlessness increases I feel as if I were being suffocated. I have placed many decades of my life at the disposal of the state, and I now feel justified in devoting the diminished strength which is left me to other things. I and my wife think of retiring to my property by lake Larius, and there to try whether we may succeed, she and I, in becoming worthy of the salvation and capable of apprehending the truth that you have offered us. You are there Julia? As the determination to retire from the world has matured in us, we have, both of us, remembered more than once the words of the Jewish sage, which you lately told us of. When the angel of God drove the first man out of Paradise, he said: ‘Henceforth your heart must be your Paradise.’ We are turning our backs on the pleasure of a city life—”
“And we do so without regret,” said Julia, interrupting her husband, “for we bear in our minds the germ of a more indestructible, purer, and more lasting happiness.”
“Amen!” said the Patriarch. “Where two such as you dwell together there the Lord is third in the bond.” “Give us your disciple Marcianus to be our travelling-companion,” said Titianus.
“Willingly,” said Eumenes. “Shall he come to visit you when I leave you?”
“Not immediately,” replied Julia. “I have this morning an important and at the same time pleasant business to attend to. You know Paulina, the widow of Pudeus. She took into her keeping a pretty young creature—”
“And Arsinoe has run away from her.”
“We took her in here,” said Titianus. “Her protectress seems to have failed in attracting her to her, or in working favorably on her nature.”
“Yes,” said the Patriarch. “There was but one key to her full, bright heart—Love—but Paulina tried to force it open with coercion and persistent driving. It remained closed—nay, the lock is spoiled.—But, if I may ask, how came the girl into your house?”
“That I can tell you later, we did not make her acquaintance for the first time yesterday.”
“And I am going to fetch her lover to her,” cried the prefect’s wife.
“Paulina will claim her of you,” said the Patriarch. “She is having her sought for everywhere; but the child will never thrive under her guidance.”
“Did the widow formally adopt Arsinoe?” asked Titianus.
“No; she proposed doing so as soon as her young pupil—”
“Intentions count for nothing in law, and I can protect our pretty little guest against her claim.”
“I will fetch her,” said Julia. “The time must certainly have seemed very long to her already. Will you come with me, Eumenes?”
“With pleasure,” replied the old man, “Arsinoe and I are excellent friends; a conciliatory word from me will do her good, and my blessing cannot harm even a heathen. Farewell, Titianus, my deacons are expecting me.”
When Julia returned to the sitting-room with her protegee, the child’s eyes were wet with tears, for the kind words of the venerable old man had gone to her heart and she knew and acknowledged that she had experienced good as well as evil from Paulina.
The matron found her husband no longer alone. Wealthy old Plutarch with his two supporters was with him, and in black garments, which were decorated with none but white flowers, instead of many colored garments; he presented a singular appearance. The old man was discoursing eagerly to the prefect; but as soon as he saw Arsinoe he broke off his harangue, clapped his hands and was quite excited with the pleasure of seeing once more the fair Roxana for whom he had once visited in vain all the gold-workers’ shops in the city.
“But I am tired,” cried Plutarch, with quite youthful vivacity, “I am quite tired of keeping the ornaments for you. There are quite enough other useless things in my house. They belong to you, not to me, and this very day I will send them to the noble Julia, that she may give them to you. Give me your hand, dear child; you have grown paler but more womanly. What do you think, Titianus, she would still do for Roxana; only your wife must find a dress for her again. All in white, and no ribband in your hair!—like a Christian.”
“I know some one who will find out the way to fitly crown these soft tresses,” replied Julia. “Arsinoe is the bride of Pollux, the sculptor.”
“Pollux!” exclaimed Plutarch, in extreme excitement. “Move me forward, Antaeus and Atlas, the sculptor Pollux is her lover? A great, a splendid artist! The very same, noble Titianus, of whom I just now speaking to you.”
“You know him?” asked the prefect’s wife.
“No, but I have just left the work-shop of Periander, the gem-cutter, and there I saw the model of a statue of Antinous that is unique, marvellous, incomparable! The Bithynian as Dionysus! The work would do no discredit to a Phidias, to a Lysippus. Pollux was out of the way, but I laid my hand at once on his work; the young master must execute it immediately in marble. Hadrian will be enchanted with this portrait of his beautiful and devoted favorite. You must admire it, every connoisseur must! I will pay for it, the only question is whether I or the city should present it to Caesar. This matter your husband must decide.”
Arsinoe was radiant with joy at these words, but she stepped modestly into the background as an official came in and handed Titianus a dispatch that had just arrived.
The prefect read it; then turning to his friend and his wife, he said:
“Hadrian ascribes to Antinous the honors of a god.”
“Fortunate Pollux!” exclaimed Plutarch. “He has executed the first statue of the new divinity. I will present it to the city, and they shall place it in the temple to Antinous of which we must lay the first stone before Caesar is back here again. Farewell, my noble friends! Greet your bridegroom from me, my child. His work belongs to me. Pollux will be the first among his fellow-artists, and it has been my privilege to discover this new star—the eighth artist whose merit I have detected while he was still unknown. Your future brother-in-law too, Teuker, will turn out well. I am having a stone cut by him with a portrait of Antinous. Once more farewell; I must go to the Council. We shall have to discuss the subject of a temple to the new divinity. Move on you two!”
An hour after Plutarch had quitted the prefect’s house Julia’s chariot was standing at the entrance of a lane, much too narrow to admit a vehicle with horses, and which ended in a little plot on which stood Euphorion’s humble house. Julia’s outrunners easily found out the residence of the sculptor’s parents, led the matron and Arsinoe to the spot, and showed them the door they should knock at.
“What a color you have, my little girl!” said Julia. “Well, I will not intrude on your meeting, but I should like to deliver you with my own hand into those of your future mother. Go to that little house, Arctus, and beg dame Doris to step out here. Only say that some one wishes to speak with her, but do not mention my name.”
Arsinoe’s heart beat so violently that she was incapable of saying a word of thanks to her kind protectress. “Step behind this palm-tree,” said the lady. Arsinoe obeyed; but she felt as though it was some outside volition, and not her own, that guided her to her hiding-place. She heard nothing of the first words spoken by the Roman lady and Doris. She only saw the dear old face of her Pollux’s mother, and in spite of her reddened eyes and the wrinkles which trouble had furrowed in her face, she could not tire of looking at it. It reminded her of the happiest days of her childhood, and she longed to rush forward and throw her arms round the neck of the kindly, good-hearted woman. Then she heard Julia say: “I have brought her to you. She is just as sweet and as maidenly and lovely as she was the first time we saw her in the theatre.”
“Where is she? Where is she?” asked Doris in a trembling voice.
Julia pointed to the palm, and was about to call Arsinoe, but the girl could no longer restrain her longing to fall on the neck of some one dear to her, for Pollux had come out of the door to see who had asked for his mother, and to see him and to fly to his breast with a cry of joy had been one and the same act to Arsinoe.
Julia gazed at the couple with moistened eyes, and when, after many kind words for old and young alike, she took leave of the happy group, she said:
“I will provide for your outfit my child, and this time I think you will wear it, not merely for one transient hour but through a long and happy life.”
Joyful singing sounded out that evening from Euphorion’s little home. Doris and her husband, and Pollux and Arsinoe, Diotima and Teuker, decked with garlands, reclined round the amphora which was wreathed with roses, drinking to pleasure and joy, to art and love, and to all the gifts of the present. The sweet bride’s long hair was once more plaited with handsome blue ribbons.
Three weeks after these events Hadrian was again in Alexandria. He kept aloof from all the festivals instituted in honor of the new god Antinous, and smiled incredulously when he was told that a new star had appeared in the sky, and that an oracle had declared it to be the soul of his lost favorite.
When Plutarch conducted the Emperor and his friends to see the Bacchus Antinous, which Pollux had completed in the clay, Hadrian was deeply struck and wished to know the name of the master who had executed this noble work of art. Not one of his companion’s had the courage to speak the name of Pollux in his presence; only Pontius ventured to come forward for his young friend. He related to Hadrian the hapless artist’s history and begged him to forgive him. The Emperor nodded his approval, and said:
“For the sake of this lost one he shall be forgiven.”
Pollux was brought into his presence, and Hadrian, holding out his hand said as he pressed the sculptor’s:
“The Immortals have bereft me of his love and faithfulness, but your art has preserved his beauty for me and for the world—”
Every city in the Empire vied in building temples and erecting statues to the new god, and Pollux, Arsinoe’s happy husband, was commissioned to execute statues and busts of Antinous for a hundred towns; but he refused most of the orders, and would send out no work as his own that he had not executed himself on a new conception. His master, Papias, returned to Alexandria, but he was received there by his fellow-artists with such insulting contempt, that in an evil hour he destroyed himself. Teuker lived to be the most famous gem-engraver of his time.
Soon after Selene’s martyrdom dame Hannah quitted Besa; the office of Superior of the Deaconesses at Alexandria was intrusted to her, and she exercised it with much blessing till an advanced age. Mary, the deformed girl, remained behind in the Nile-port, which under Hadrian was extended into the magnificent city of Antmoe. There were there two graves from which she could not bear to part.
Four years after Arsinoe’s marriage with Pollux, Hadrian called the young sculptor to Rome; he was there to execute the statue of the Emperor in a quadriga. This work was intended to crown and finish his mausoleum constructed by Pontius, and Pollux carried it out in so admirable a manner, that when it was ended, Hadrian said to him with a smile:
“Now you have earned the right to pronounce sentence of death on the works of other masters.” Euphorion’s son lived in honor and prosperity to see his children, the children of his faithful wife Arsinoe—who was greatly admired by the Tiber-grow up to be worthy citizens. They remained heathen; but the Christian love which Eumenes had taught Paulina’s foster-daughter was never forgotten, and she kept a kindly place for it in her heart and in her household. A few months before the young couple left Alexandria, Doris had peacefully gone to her last rest, and her husband died soon after her; the want of his faithful companion was the complaint he succumbed to.
On the shores of the Tiber, Pontius was still the sculptor’s friend. Balbilla and her husband gave their corrupt fellow-citizens the example of a worthy, faithful marriage on the old Roman pattern. The poetess’s bust had been completed by Pollux in Alexandria, and with all its tresses and little curls, it found favor in Balbilla’s eyes.
Verus was to have enjoyed the title of Caesar even during Hadrian’s lifetime, but after a long illness he died the first. Lucilla nursed him with unfailing devotion and enjoyed the longed-for monopoly of his attentions through a period of much suffering. It was on their son that in later years the purple devolved.
The predictions of the prefect Titianus were fulfilled, for the Emperor’s faults increased with years and the meaner side of his mind and nature came into sharper relief. Titianus and his wife led a retired life by lake Larius, far from the world, and both were baptized before they died. They never pined for the turmoil of a pleasure-seeking world or its dazzling show, for they had learnt to cherish in their own hearts all that is fairest in life.
It was the slave Mastor who brought to Titianus the news of the sovereign’s death. Hadrian had given him his freedom before he died and had left him a handsome legacy.
The prefect gave him a piece of land to farm and continued in friendly relations with his Christian neighbor and his pretty daughter, who grew up among her father’s co-religionists.
When Titianus had told his wife the melancholy news he added solemnly:
“A great sovereign is dead. The pettinesses which disfigured the man Hadrian will be forgotten by posterity, for the ruler Hadrian was one of those men whom Fate sets in the places they belong to, and who, true to their duty, struggle indefatigably to the end. With wise moderation he was so far master of himself as to bridle his ambition and to defy the blame and prejudice of all the Romans. The hardest, and perhaps the wisest, resolution of his life was to abandon the provinces which it would have exhausted the power of the Empire to retain. He travelled over every portion of his dominion within the limits he himself had set to it, shrinking from neither frost nor heat, and he tried to be as thoroughly acquainted with every portion of it as if the Empire were a small estate he had inherited. His duties as a sovereign forced him to travel, and his love of travel lightened the duty. He was possessed by a real passion to understand and learn everything. Even the Incomprehensible set no limits to his thirst for knowledge, but ever striving to see farther and to dig deeper than is possible to the mind of man, he wasted a great part of his mighty powers in trying to snatch aside the curtain which hides the destinies of the future. No one ever worked at so many secondary occupations as he, and yet no former Emperor ever kept his eye so unerringly fixed on the main task of his life, the consolidation and maintenance of the strength of the state and the improvement and prosperity of its citizens.”
