Ancient Manners; Also Known As Aphrodite Part 3

She walked slowly past the houses, in the deserted street bathed in moonlight. A little flickering shadow danced behind her.

II

ON THE QUAY AT ALEXANDRIA

On the quay at Alexandria a singing-girl was standing singing. By her side were two flute-girls, seated on the white parapet.

I

The satyrs pursue in the woods The light-Footed oreads.

They chase the nymphs upon the mountains, They fill their eyes with affright, They seize their hair in the wind, They grasp their b.r.e.a.s.t.s in the chase, And throw their warm bodies backwards Upon the green dew-covered moss, And the beautiful bodies, their beautiful bodies half divine, Writhe with the agony . . .

O women! Eros makes your lips cry aloud With dolorous, sweet Desire.

The flute-players repeated:

"Eros!

Eros!"

and wailed in their twin reeds.

II

Cybele pursues across the plain Attys, beautiful as Apollo.

Eros has smitten her to the heart, and for him, O Totoi! but not him for her, Instead of love, cruel G.o.d, wicked Eros, Thou counsellest but hatred . . .

Across the meads, the vast distant plains, Cybele chases Attys; And because she adores the scorned, She infuses into his veins The great cold breath, the breath of death.

O dolorous, sweet Desire!

"Eros!

Eros!"

Shrill wailings poured from the flutes.

III

The Goat-foot pursues to the river Syrinx, the daughter of the fountain; Pale Eros, that loves the taste of tears, Kissed her as she ran, check to cheek; And the frail shadow of the drowned maiden s.h.i.+vers, reeds, upon the waters.

But Eros kings it over the world and the G.o.ds.

He kings it over death itself.

On the watery tomb he gathered for us All the reeds, and with them made the flute, 'Tis a dead soul that weeps here, women, Dolorous, sweet Desire.

Whilst the flute prolonged the slow chant of the last line, the singer held out her hand to the pa.s.sers-by standing around her in a circle, and collected four obols, which she slipped into her shoe.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Groups formed in places, and women wandered amongst them]

The crowd gradually melted away, innumerable, curious of itself and watching its own movements. The noise of footsteps and voices drowned even the sound of the sea. Sailors hauled their boats upon the quay with bowed shoulders. Fruit-sellers pa.s.sed to and fro with teeming baskets upon their arms. Beggars begged for alms with trembling hand. a.s.ses, laden with leathern bottles, trotted in front of the goads of their drivers. But it was the hour of sunset; and the crowd of idlers, more numerous than the crowd bent on affairs, covered the quay. Groups formed in places, and women wandered amongst them. The names of well-known characters pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth. The young men looked at the philosophers, and the philosophers looked at the courtesans.

The latter were of every kind and condition, from the most celebrated, dressed in fine silks and wearing shoes of gilded leather, to the most miserable, who walked barefooted. The poor ones were no less beautiful than the others, but less fortunate only, and the attention of the sages was fixed by preference upon those whose natural grace was not disfigured by the artifice of girdles and weighty jewels. As it was the day before the Aphrodisiae, these women had every license to choose the dress which suited them the best, and some of the youngest had even ventured to wear nothing at all. But their nudity shocked n.o.body, for they would not thus have exposed all the details of their bodies to the sun if they had possessed the slightest defect which might have rendered them the laughing-stock of the married women.

"Tryphera! Tryphera!"

And a young courtesan of joyful mien elbowed her way through the crowd to join a friend of whom she had just caught sight.

"Tryphera! are you invited?"

"Where, Seso?"

"To Bacchis's."

"Not yet. She is giving a dinner?"

"A dinner? A banquet, my dear. She is to liberate her most beautiful slave, Aphrodisia, on the second day of the feast."

"At last! She has perceived at last that people came to see her only for the sake of her slave."

"I think she has seen nothing. It is a whim of old Cheres, the s.h.i.+p-owner on the quay. He wanted to buy the girl for ten minae. Bacchis refused. Twenty minae; she refused again."

"She must be crazy."

"Why, pray? It was her ambition to have a freed-woman. Besides, she was quite right to bargain. Cheres will give thirty-five minae, and at that price the girl becomes a freed-woman."

"Thirty-five minae? Three thousand five hundred drachmae? Three thousand five hundred drachmae for a negress?"

"She is a white man's daughter."

"But her mother is black."

"Bacchis declared that she would not part with her for less, and old Cheres is so amorous that he consented."

"I hope he is invited at any rate."

"No! Aphrodisia is to be served up at the banquet as the last dish, after the fruit. Everybody will taste of it at pleasure, and it is only on the morrow that she is to be handed over to Cheres; but I am much afraid she will be tired . . ."

"Don't pity her. With him she will have time to recover. I know him, Seso. I have watched him sleep."

They laughed together at Cheres. Then they complimented one another. "You have a pretty robe," said Seso. "Did you have it trimmed at home?"