Ancient Manners; Also Known As Aphrodite Part 12

The pupil chose the day of her first experiment at her own good pleasure, because desire is ordained by the G.o.ddess, whose will must be obeyed. On that day, she was allotted one of the houses of the Terrace, and some of these children, who were not even nubile, counted amongst the most zealous and the most esteemed.

The interior of the Didascalion, the seven cla.s.s-rooms, the little theatre, and the peristyle of the court, were decorated with ninety-two frescoes designed to sum up the whole of amatory teaching. It was the life-work of one man. Cleochares of Alexandria, the natural son and disciple of Apelles, had terminated them on the eve of his death.

Recently, Queen Berenice, who was greatly interested in the celebrated school and sent her young sisters to it, had ordered a series of marble groups from Demetrios in order to complete the decoration; but as yet only one of them had been erected, in the children's cla.s.s-room.

At the end of each year, in the presence of the entire body of courtesans, a great compet.i.tion took place, which excited an extraordinary emulation amongst this crowd of women, for the twelve prizes which were offered conferred the right to the most exalted glory it was possible to dream of: the right to enter the Cotytteion.

This last monument was shrouded in so much mystery, that it is impossible for us to give a detailed description of it. We know merely that it was comprised in the peribola and that it had the form of a triangle of which the base was a temple of the G.o.ddess Cotytto, in whose name fearful unknown debauches took place. The other two sides of the monument were composed of eighteen houses; they were inhabited by thirty-six courtesans, so sought after by rich lovers that they did not give themselves for less than two minae: they were the Baptes of Alexandria. Once a month, at full moon, they a.s.sembled in the temple enclosure, maddened by aphrodisiacs, and girt with the canonical phallos. The oldest of the thirty-six was required to take a mortal dose of the terrible erotogenous philter. The certainty of a speedy death impelled her to attempt without hesitation all the dangerous feats of sensual pa.s.sion before which the living recoil. Her body, covered with foam, became the centre and model of the whirling orgie; in the midst of prolonged shriekings, cries, tears, and dances, the other naked women embraced her with frenzy, bathed their hair in her sweat, fastened on her burning flesh, and drew fresh ardors from the uninterrupted spasm of this furious agony. Three years these women lived thus, and such was the wild madness of their end at the close of the thirty-sixth month.

Other less venerated sanctuaries had been erected by the women, in honour of the other names of the multiform Aphrodite. There was an altar sacred to the Ouranian Aphrodite, which received the chaste vows of sentimental courtesans: another to the Apostrophian Aphrodite, who granted forgetfulness of unrequited loves; another to the Chrysean Aphrodite, who attracted rich lovers; another to Genetyllis, the patron G.o.ddess of women in child-birth; another to Aphrodite of Colias, who presided over gross pa.s.sions, for everything which related to love fell within the pious cult of the G.o.ddess. But these special altars possessed no efficacy or virtue except in the case of unimportant desires. Their service was haphazard, their favours were a matter of daily occurrence, and their votaries were on terms of familiarity with them. Suppliants whose prayers had been granted made simple offerings of flowers; those who were not content defiled them with their excrements. They were neither consecrated nor kept up by the priests, and their profanation incurred no punishment.

Far different was the discipline of the temple.

The temple, the Great Temple of the Great G.o.ddess, the most sacred spot in all Egypt, the inviolable Astarteion, was a colossal edifice one hundred and thirty six feet in length, standing on the summit of the gardens and approached on all sides by seventeen steps. The golden gates were guarded by twelve hermaphrodite hierodules; symbolising the two objects of love and the twelve hours of the night.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The entrance did not face towards the east, but in the direction of Paphos, that is to say, towards the north-east. The sun's rays never penetrated directly into the sanctuary of the Great G.o.ddess of the Night. Eighty-six columns upheld the architrave: they were tinted purple as far as their mid-height, and all the upper part stood out from these gaudy trappings with an unspeakable whiteness, like the busts of standing women.

Between the epistyle and the coronis, the long belt-shaped Zophora unfolded its b.e.s.t.i.a.l sculptures, erotic and fabulous. There were centauresses mounted by stallions, goats tumbled by meagre satyrs, virgins severed by monstrous bulls, naiads covered by stags, bacchantes loved by tigers, lionesses seized by griffins. All this great wallowing mult.i.tude of beings was exalted by the irresistible divine pa.s.sion. The male strained, the female opened, and the fusion of the creative forces produced the first thrill of life. The crowd of obscure couples sometimes, by chance, left a clear s.p.a.ce round some immortal scene: Europa on hands and knees bearing the weight of the glorious Olympian beast; Leda guiding the hardy swan between her beautiful arched thighs.

Farther on, the insatiable Siren exhausting expiring Glaucos; the G.o.d Pan standing upright and possessing an hamadryad with flying hair; the Sphinx raising her croup to the level of the horse Pegasos. At the end of the frieze, the sculptor had carved a figure of himself facing the G.o.ddess Aphrodite. He stood there modelling the contours of a perfect cteis in soft wax, with the G.o.ddess herself as his model, as if his whole ideal of beauty, joy, and virtue had long since taken refuge in this precious fragile flower.

II

MELITTA

"Purify thyself, stranger."

"I shall enter pure," said Demetrios.

Dipping the end of her hair in water, the young gate-keeper moistened first his eyelids, then his lips and fingers, in order that his glance might be sanctified, as also the kiss of his mouth and the caress of his hands.

And then he pressed forward into the wood of Aphrodite.

Through the dark branches, he perceived a setting sun of sombre purple, powerless to dazzle the eyes. It was the evening of the day on which his life had been convulsed by the meeting with Chrysis.

The feminine soul is of a simplicity incredible to men. Where there is nothing but a straight line, they obstinately search for the complexity of a web; they find emptiness and go astray in it. Thus it was that the soul of Chrysis, limpid as a little child's, appeared to Demetrios more mysterious than a problem in metaphysics. After leaving this woman upon the quay, he went back to his house like a man in a dream, incapable of answering all the questions which tormented him. What did she want with these three gifts? It was impossible for her either to wear or to sell a celebrated mirror, acquired by theft, the comb of an a.s.sa.s.sinated woman, the pearl necklace of the G.o.ddess. If she kept them at home, she would expose herself every day to the possibility of a fatal discovery. Then why ask for them? To destroy them? He knew only too well that women are incapable of enjoying things in secret and that good fortune brings them happiness only as soon as it is noised abroad. And then, what divination, what profound clairvoyance had led her to judge him capable of accomplis.h.i.+ng three such extraordinary actions for her sake?

a.s.suredly, if he had liked, he might have carried off Chrysis from her home, held her at his mercy, and made her his mistress, his wife, or his slave, at choice. He had even the right to do away with her, simply.

Former revolutions had accustomed the citizens to violent deaths, and no one would have troubled about the disappearance of a courtesan. Chrysis must know this, and yet she had dared . . .

[Ill.u.s.tration: The young gate-keeper moistened first his eyelids]

The more he thought about her, the more grateful he was to her for having varied the usual routine of bargaining in so charming a manner.

How many women of equal worth with Chrysis had offered themselves clumsily! But what did this one ask for? Neither love, nor gold, nor jewels, but three unheard-of crimes! She interested him keenly. He had offered her all the treasures of Egypt; he felt distinctly, now, that if she had accepted them she would not have received two obols, and that he would have tired of her even before knowing her. Three crimes were certainly an unusual salary: but she was worthy to receive it since she was a woman capable of exacting it, and he promised himself to go on with the adventure.

In order not to give himself the time to repent of his firm resolve, he went the very same day to the house of Bacchis, found the house empty, took the silver mirror and went off to the gardens.

Was it necessary to make a direct call on Chrysis's second victim?

Demetrios thought not. The priestess Touni, who owned the famous ivory comb, was so charming and so weak that he was afraid of repenting if he went straight to her house without any preliminary precautions, He retraced his steps and went along the Grand Terrace.

The courtesans were on show in their "chambres exposee" like flowers in a shop window.

Their alt.i.tudes and their costumes had no less diversity than their ages, types, and races. The most beautiful, according to the tradition of Phryne, leaving exposed nothing but the oval of their laces, sat enveloped from head to foot in their great garment of fine wool. Others had adopted the fas.h.i.+on of transparent robes, under which one distinguished their beauties mysteriously, just as, through limpid water, one discerns the green mosses lying in splashes of shade upon the bottom. Those whose sole charm consisted in their youthfulness sat naked to the waist, stiffening out their busts in order to display to the best advantage the firmness of their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. But the most mature, knowing that the features of the feminine visage age more quickly than the skin of the body, sat quite naked, holding their b.r.e.a.s.t.s in their hands, and stretching their clumsy thighs apart, as if they wished to prove that they were still women.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Demetrios pa.s.sed slowly before them.]

Demetrios pa.s.sed slowly before them, with unflagging admiration. He had never yet succeeded in contemplating a woman's nudity without intense emotion. He understood neither disgust before the corpse of a young woman nor insensibility to the body of a little girl. That evening any woman could have charmed him. Provided she remained silent and did not display more ardour than the minimum required by the etiquette of the bed, he was quite ready to forgive her for her lack of beauty. And what is more, he even preferred that she should have a coa.r.s.e body, for the more his intelligence considered faultless forms, the less room was there for his sensual desires. The agitation which he felt upon contact with living beauty was due to a sensualism exclusively cerebral, which annihilated mere s.e.xual excitation. He remembered with anguish having remained all night as impotent as an old man, by the side of the most admirable woman he had ever held in his arms. And since that night he had learnt to choose mistresses of less purity.

"Friend," said a voice, "you don't recognise me?"

He turned round with a negative sign, and went on his way, for he never undressed the same woman twice. It was the principle that guided his visits to the gardens. A woman one has not yet possessed retains something of the virgin; but what good result, what surprise can one expect from a second rendez-vous? It is almost marriage. Demetrios did not expose himself to the illusions of the second night. Queen Berenice sufficed for his rare conjugal impulses, and with that exception he was careful to choose a new accomplice for every evening's indispensable adultery.

"Clonarion!

Gnatene!

Plango!

Mnais!

Crobyle!

Ioessa."

They cried their names as he pa.s.sed, and some added protestations of their ardent natures or proposed an abnormal vice. Demetrios followed the road. He was preparing to choose at a venture, according to his habit, when a little girl entirely dressed in blue leaned her head upon her shoulder and said to him softly, without rising:

"Is it quite out of the question?"

The novelty of this mode of address made him smile. He stopped.

"Open the door," he said. "I choose you."

The little girl gleefully jumped to her feet and gave two raps with the phallus-shaped knocker. The door was opened by an old slave woman.

"Gorgo," said the little girl, "I have got somebody; quickly, get some cakes and Cretan wine, and make the bed."

She turned round to Demetrios.

"You don't want any satyrion?"

"No," said the young man laughing. "You have some?"

"I have to keep it," said the child. "I am asked for it oftener than you think. Come this way; be careful of the steps, one of them is worn. Go into my room. I shall be back in a moment."