Chapter II: Saguntum (2)

Innumerable things the little _lupa_ learned at the side of the old woman, bony and ugly as a Parca! She helped her grind the white lead which, mixed with isinglass, filled the wrinkles of the face; she prepared the bean flour to anoint the breasts and abdomen, to make the skin tight and elastic; she filled little flasks with antimony to give brilliancy to the eyes; she made a liquid preparation of carmine for coloring with light touches the paste-filled wrinkles, and she listened with profound attention to the wise counsels with which the old woman instructed her pupils, so that they might show off their particular charms to the best advantage and hide their defects. The old Thessalian advised the girls with plump bodies to use cork soles inside their shoes, and the tall ones to wear light sandals, and to shrink their heads down between their shoulders; she made pads for the thin, whalebone corsets for the stout, she stained the gray hair with soot, and those who had good teeth she obliged to carry a stalk of myrtle between their lips, counseling them to smile at the slightest word.

The young girl possessed the old witch's confidence to such an extent that she assisted her in the most dangerous part of her science, the confection of love-philters and the making of charms, which had more than once caused her to be prosecuted by the officials of the Areopagus. The richest hetæræ consulted her about their desires and revenges, and she gave them the benefit of her knowledge. To accomplish the impotence of a man or the sterility of a woman, it was only necessary to give them a glass of wine in which a barbel had been stewed; to attract a forgetful lover a cake of unleavened dough was burned in a fire made of branches of thyme and laurel; and to convert love into hatred it was only necessary to follow the man, stepping in his tracks the opposite way, placing the right foot where he had put his left, and murmuring at the same time: "I am upon you, I step on you." If one wished to cause a satiated lover to return, the old woman rolled a bronze ball which she carried in her bosom, asking Venus to cause the lover to roll in over the threshold of the door in the same manner, and if the conjury produced no effect, the wax image of the person beloved was thrown into the brazier while asking the gods to melt the frozen heart with love even as the figure melted. With these enchantments, accompanied by mysterious invocations, went philters composed of aphrodisiacs and exciting herbs, which frequently led to death.

One moonlight spring night Myrrhina had an adventure in the Cerameicus, which resulted in her abandoning the den of the Thessalian. Seated behind a tomb, her howl soft as a lament attracted a man wrapped in a white mantle. By the brilliancy of his eyes and the insecurity of his step he seemed to be intoxicated. He wore on his head a crown of withered roses.

Myrrhina divined that he was a distinguished citizen coming from a banquet. It was the poet Simalion, a young aristocrat who had won a crown in the Olympian games, and in whom Athens saw revived the inspiration of Anacreon. The richest hetæræ sang his verses at banquets to the music of the lyre, and virtuous dames murmured them in the solitude of the gynæceum, flushing with emotion. The most famous beauties of Athens contended for the poet, and he, already an invalid in his young manhood, and unable to resist the strain of worldly adoration, took refuge in the temple of Æsculapius when the cough compelled him to spit blood; he went on a pilgrimage to the healing springs throughout Greece and the islands; and no sooner did he begin to feel stronger, with new blood surging through his veins, than, scorning the doctors, he began once more the round of banqueting with business men and artists of Attica, in company with famous hetæræ and genteel Cyprians, rolling from the arms of one to another; paying for the caresses with verses which the city afterward repeated; ever ardent, and consuming his life like the torch which at the nocturnal feasts of Dionysus was passed by the chain of bacchantes from hand to hand until lost in the infinite.

Coming from one of these orgies he met Myrrhina, and contemplating in the moonlight her youthful beauty, undimmed and almost childlike there in a place frequented by the filthy _lupas_, he raised his hand to his eyes as if he feared he were being deceived by the aberrations of intoxication. This must be Psyche with those firm, harmoniously curving breasts, round as cups; with those correct and gentle outlines which would have been the despair of sculptors at the Academy. The poet experienced the same satisfaction as when, after hours of solitary plodding along the wall of Themistocles from Athens to the port, he hit upon the culminating verse of an ode.

She started to drag him to the old Thessalian's hut, but Simalion, dazzled by the marble flesh which seemed to shine through the rags, took her to his beautiful residence on the Street of Tripods, and there Myrrhina remained like a lady, with slaves and luxurious garments.

This caprice of the poet astounded all Athens. In the Agora and in the Cerameicus they talked of nothing but Simalion's new love. They marveled at the rescue of a precious stone, forgotten and lost in the sands, which suddenly shone forth on the forehead of a grandee.

The great hetæræ, who had never succeeded in making complete conquest of the fickle poet, were amazed at seeing him devotedly attached to a young girl from a _dicterion_, who was remembered by many adventurers in the Piræus. He took her out in his chariot, driving three horses with close-cropped manes, and to all the great feasts in the temples of Attica; in the morning he composed verses in her honor, and he awoke her by reciting them, while he flung a shower of rose petals upon her couch. He gave banquets to his artist friends that he might revel in their envy and admiration, when, at their conclusion, he had her exhibit herself nude upon the table, in all the magnificence of that perfect beauty which aroused a religious emotion in the Greeks.

Faithful to Simalion from gratitude at first, and finally enamored of the poet and of his works, Myrrhina adored him as teacher as well as lover. In a short time she learned to play the lyre, to recite verses in all the known styles, she read in her lover's library so diligently that she was able to hold her own among the guests at the banquets of artists, and was invited out among the most brilliant hetæræ of Athens.

Simalion, constantly growing more enthusiastic over his beloved, dissipated his fortune and his life. He ordered for her from Asia transparent mantles embroidered with fantastic flowers, through which shone her pearly flesh; gold dust to sprinkle upon her hair, making her like the goddesses, which the poets and artists of Greece always painted blonde; he charged the navigators to buy roses in Egypt of marvelous freshness. He was steadily growing more emaciated, his skin more pallid, and his gaze glowing with fever, coughing and lying in the arms of his mistress, his strength slipping away.

Thus two years passed, until one autumn afternoon, stretched on the lawn in his garden, his head resting on the knees of his beautiful inamorata, he heard his verses sung for the last time by the clear voice of Myrrhina, accompanied by the fluttering of her white fingers over the chords of the lyre. The setting sun caused Minerva's lance aloft by the Parthenon, dominating the city, to glow like a coal of fire; his boyish hand could scarce sustain the golden cup of honey and wine. He made an effort to kiss his mistress; the roses which crowned him fell apart, covering Myrrhina's breast with a shower of petals, and, uttering a plaint like that of a woman, he closed his eyes, falling upon that breast where he had lavished the last strength of his life.

The young girl wept for him with the desperation of a widow. She cut her splendid hair to lay it as an offering upon his tomb. She put aside her dazzling costumes, she dressed in dark wool like the Athenian women of virtuous homes, and remained in retirement in her house, which she kept closed and silent as a gynæceum.

The necessity of living, of maintaining the luxury to which she had become accustomed, of keeping a chariot and slaves and grooms, forced her, however, to consider her beauty, and the most celebrated hetæræ became alarmed at the new rival. Covered with a dark red wig to hide the tonsure of mourning, wrapped in fine veils from which her throat emerged adorned with pearls, her fresh and alabastrine arms loaded to the shoulders with bracelets, she showed herself at an upper window of her house with the grave majesty of a goddess awaiting veneration. The richest men of Athens paused by night in the Street of Tripods to gaze at the poet's widow, as the women in the Ceramaeicus sarcastically called her. Some, more daring, or tremulous with desire, raised the index finger in mute question; but vainly they awaited her affirmative reply--the customary sigil of the hetæræ, touching thumb to index finger as it were an annulus.

Few managed to gain entrance to the famous courtesan's house. They grumbled that some nights, in moments of tedium, she had opened her door to young students who were modeling their first statues in the gardens of the Academy, or reciting their unrenowned verses to the idle in the Agora--youths who could only afford to spend on pleasures a few oboli, or at most a drachma. On the other hand the rich, who offered golden stateres or several minæ to enter the house, were considered too poor to win favor. The old courtesans whispered into one another's ears, with a degree of respect, that a petty Asiatic king, on passing through Athens, had given Myrrhina two talents for one visit--as much as any republic in Greece would spend in a year--and that the beautiful hetæra, unmoved by such a fortune, had suffered his presence only while her clepsydra emptied itself once, for, tired of men, she measured prurience by her water-clock.

Fabulously rich merchants, on arriving at the Piræus, sought access to Myrrhina's house through the good offices of friends. They heaped presents upon the vagabond artists who were the courtesan's familiars, that they might be admitted to her suppers; and more than one, arriving at the port with a fleet loaded with rich merchandise, hastened to sell everything without waiting to discharge his cargo, so that he might stay in the poet's house; and he returned to his country with the help of charity, content with his poverty when he saw the envy and respect which he inspired among his companions.

Thus she met Bomaro, a young Iberian merchant from Zacynthus, who had come to Athens with three ships laden with hides. The courtesan was attracted by his sweetness, which contrasted with the rudeness of the other merchants brutalized by their contact with the great ports. He spoke little and blushed, as if the silence of his long stays at sea had given him the timidity of a virgin. If she forced him to relate his adventures as a navigator he did so with simplicity, without mentioning the dangers he encountered. He displayed particularly a childish admiration for Grecian culture.

Myrrhina, during the supper at which she saw him for the first time, surprised his eyes fixed on her with the expression of tenderness and respect of one gazing at a goddess impossible of possession. The navigator, reared among barbarians, in a remote colony scarcely retaining traces of its mother Greece, began to interest the courtesan more than the young Athenians and opulent merchants who surrounded her. Tremulous and hesitant he craved the grace of a single night, and spent it near her with more admiration than enjoyment, adoring her regal beauty, thrilled by her voice, put to sleep by it like a warm maternal lullaby, accompanied by the lyre.

When he awoke he begged to turn over to her the entire product of his cargo; but Myrrhina, hardly knowing why, refused to accept it, in spite of his urging. He was rich; he had no parents; far away in that land of barbarians he possessed immense flocks, hundreds of slaves who cultivated his fields or worked in his mines; great potteries, and many ships like the three which awaited him in the Piræus; and seeing that the courtesan, with kindly smile, treated him like a generous boy, declining to accept his money, he bought in the Street of the Goldsmiths a prodigious collar of pearls, the despair of the hetæræ, and sent it to Myrrhina before he left the city.

Afterwards he came back many times. He could not decide to return to his country. He set sail with his flotilla, but in the next port he took on a cargo for Athens, paying no regard to the price, and scarcely came to anchor in the Piræus before he rushed to the courtesan's house, nor could resolve to leave until he suspected Myrrhina's weariness of his presence.

The courtesan finally became accustomed to this submissive lover, ever at her feet, who was ready to die for her, showing his adoration with the fervor of a foreigner, so different from the cynical and mocking courtesy of the Athenians. She called him "little brother," and this word, which the hetæræ used with young lovers, gradually took on her lips a warmth of sincere affection. When he was delayed in returning from the islands she longed for his presence, and when she saw him at the door she ran to him with outstretched arms, in a transport of joy such as her other friends never witnessed.

She did not love him as she had loved the poet, but the earnest humility of Bomaro, his respectful and docile love, so different from the ardor she inspired in others, moved Myrrhina to a sentiment of gratitude.

One night, the Iberian, who seemed preoccupied, ventured after much vacillation to express his inner thought.

He could not live without her; he would never return alone to Zacynthus; he was resolved to abandon his fortune rather than never to see her more. He would sooner be a stevedore on the wharf at Phalerum; and finally, like one who makes a dash to more quickly overcome an obstacle, he abruptly proposed to make her his wife, turning his fortune over to her, and to take her to smiling Zacynthus with its flowery fields and its rose-colored mountains, so like those of Attica.

Myrrhina smiled while listening to him and her heart was touched by the affectionate self-abnegation of the Iberian who, to unite with her forever, was willing to overlook a shameful past in the _dicterion_ and in the Cerameicus. She rejected his proposals with an ironical smile; but Bomaro was persistent. Was she not tired of her mode of life, of seeing herself flattered as a thing of great price, but often scorned by coarse creatures who thought they made themselves her masters by merely offering their gold? Would she not like to be a sovereign on the coasts of Iberia, surrounded by people who would admire her Athenian attainments?

Bomaro conquered her by his loving determination, and one day Athens beheld with surprise that the house on the Street of Tripods was sold, and that Myrrhina's slaves were carrying to the port the riches gathered during three years of mad fortune, loading them in the ships of the Iberian who had unfurled from the masts his purple sails for a triumphal voyage.

Myrrhina, in her desire to propitiate him who gave himself up to her so completely, wished to leave her whole past behind. She proposed to be a new woman, to put away her sinister cognomen, and begging Bomaro to repeat the most beautiful names of the Iberian women, she chose that of Sónnica as the most pleasing to her ears.

Arrived at Zacynthus, the navigator and the Greek woman were married in the temple of Diana before all the Senate, of which the young man was himself a member.

The city felt the effects of the charm which seemed to emanate from the person of Sónnica. She was like a breath from distant Athens, which fascinated the Greek merchants in Saguntum, grown slack by their long stay among uncultured foreigners.

At the banquets, at the hour of sweet wines, when she sang the hymns of the great masters, the Saguntine youths from the ward of the Greeks were impelled to fall at her feet and adore her as a goddess. After being married a year Bomaro realized in the growth of his fortune the assistance of the woman, who, in changing her environment, began to interest herself in material things through her desire to prove her worth before the noble dames who gossipped about her.

She watched the work in the fields, took note of the great flocks, and the potteries; she went to the port to greet the arrival of the ships; and Bomaro's enormous fortune increased. Excellent results followed the business ventures which she counseled, as she lay in the shade of a clump of laurel in her garden, speaking in a slow harmonious voice, caressed by a feather fan in the hands of a slave.

Bomaro, the days of more ardent love-making ended, sailed along the coasts of Iberia, his mind free from business cares, and desirous of adding to the fortune which Sónnica administered so well. She had surrounded herself by a court of youths who treated her as a preceptress. The young Greeks born in Saguntum flocked about her to learn the manners and customs of Athens, which was their perpetual dream. The evil tongues in the city called her Sónnica the Cyprian, but the plebs who were the recipients of her charity, and the small merchants who never appealed to her without result, entitled her Sónnica the rich, and they were ready to fight those who spoke ill of her.

One winter, four years after their marriage, Bomaro perished by shipwreck near the Pillars of Hercules, and Sónnica found herself in absolute possession of an immense fortune, and mistress of a whole city, over which she reigned by virtue of her riches and of her kindness of heart. She freed slaves in memory of the unfortunate navigator, she sent costly offerings to all the temples in Saguntum, she raised on the Acropolis a cenotaph in memory of Bomaro, summoning marble-workers from Athens for this purpose. By her charities she won consideration, bringing this city of sturdy and austere customs to tolerate her bright, mirth-loving existence, which was a perpetuation of Athenian manners in the midst of Iberic sobriety.

Having passed the period of mourning, she gave suppers in her country-house which lasted until dawn. She brought famous auletai from Attica who set the Saguntine youths wild with their flutes. She sent ships on voyages with no other commercial object than to bring rare perfumes from Asia, fabrics from Egypt, and unique adornments from Carthage; and her fame extended so far into the interior that kinglets from Celtiberia were drawn to Saguntum to behold that wonderful woman, as wise as a priestess, and as beautiful as a divinity. The Greeks admired her, observing that she strengthened the prestige of their race among the primitive Saguntines, who were lavish with eulogy of her disinterestedness. Thus she lived! No women entered her house, none but flute-players, dancers, and slaves; she was surrounded by men who yearned for her, but she held herself aloof, and treated them all with a masculine but distant intimacy. She was ever thinking of Athens the luminous, the city which held so many memories, and many of whose customs she sought to revive.

Euphobias the philosopher, as he reached this point in his story, stoutly declared that Sónnica's life in Saguntum was above reproach, in spite of what the Greek women of the district of the merchants said. He himself, who possessed the bitterest tongue in the city, affirmed it. Several times she had been attracted toward some guest at her dinners. Alorcus, the scion of a petty king of Celtiberia, who lived in Saguntum and frequented her house, had made an impression upon her with his wild, virile beauty, as a son of the mountains; but Sónnica held him back, plainly fearing to take the step and unite herself with one of a barbarous race. The memory of Attica wholly occupied her imagination. If some young Athenian had landed on those shores, some youth as beautiful as Alcibiades, singing verses, modeling statues, and displaying skill and dexterity as in the Olympian games, perhaps she might have fallen into his arms, but her emotions were unstirred among the arrogant Celtiberians who came to her feasts smelling of horses and with their swords girded at their sides, and among the effeminate sons of merchants, becurled, and shedding perfumes, caressing their small slave boys, who accompanied them even in the bath.

"Athenian," continued the philosopher, "you should present yourself to Sónnica. She will receive you kindly. You are not an ephebus," he added, with a mocking smile; "your beard is turning gray, but you have in your figure the arrogance of a king in the Iliad; upon your forehead something of the majesty of Socrates; and who knows but that you may fall heir to Bomaro's riches! If that should come to pass, do not forget the poor philosopher. I will be content with a skin of wine from Laurona, since to-day you condemn me to thirst."

Euphobias laughed, slapping Actæon on the shoulder.

"I am invited to Sónnica's banquet to-night," said the Greek.

"You, also? Then we shall meet there. I am not invited, but I go with the same right as a dog belonging to the house."

The philosopher saw Alcon, the peaceful citizen, who had just come down from the Acropolis, pass through the centre of the Forum.

"There is one of the few good men of this city. He extols virtue to me, he counsels me to go to work, and to forget philosophy, and on top of all that he never fails to give me something to drink; so farewell until to-night, stranger."

He hurried toward Alcon who, leaning on his staff, greeted him with a kindly smile.

Actæon, finding himself once more alone wandered through the centre of the market. Suddenly he heard a youthful voice calling him. It was Rhanto, sitting on the ground among the pitchers which were now empty of milk, selling her last cheeses. Near her squatted the young potter. They were eating a hard cake with fresh, juicy onions, playfully disputing the mouthfuls amid merry laughter. The shepherdess offered Actæon a round cake, and the Greek accepted gratefully. He seemed destined to receive his food in Saguntum from feminine hands. Twice since he landed he had been succored by women.

Seated between the young people he saw the market gradually become deserted. The shepherds drove their flocks toward the Gate of the Sea; the Celtiberian chiefs, bearing their women behind them on their horses, rode off at a gallop, eager to reach their villages in the mountains; and the empty carts rumbled slowly toward the hamlets and towers in the Saguntine domain.

Again Actæon saw the Celtiberian shepherd in the colonnades, moving from one group of rustics to another, listening to their conversation. As he passed near the Greek he gazed at him with those enigmatic eyes which awoke within him shadowy recollections.

All at once the young potter arose and started to run, hiding behind the columns around the Forum.

"He has seen his father," said Rhanto quietly. "There is Mopsus coming down from the Acropolis."

Actæon advanced to meet the archer.

"My word has been sufficient to have you received by the Senate. The city will soon need good soldiers like yourself. The elders seemed somewhat alarmed this morning. They fear Hannibal, that young cub of Hamilcar, who now leads the Carthaginians, and who will not calmly brook our friendship with the Romans and the execution of his sympathizers in Saguntum. Here, take this; it is the advance pay which the Republic allows you."

He tendered Actæon a handful of coins, which the Greek put into his pouch. Mopsus then invited him to his house to meet his sons and to dine; but the Athenian was obliged to plead his previous invitation to Sónnica's banquet.

When the archer had left, Actæon felt the torment of thirst, and, remembering the philosopher's recommendations, he entered the establishment of the Roman whose Lauronian wine inspired so much enthusiasm in Euphobias. At the counter he changed a victoriatus, and was given a boat-shaped terra cotta patera full of black wine crowned with iridescent bubbles. Two soldiers were drinking in a corner of the tavern--two rough mercenaries with the faces of bandits. One was an Iberian, the other with bronzed skin and athletic frame looked like a Libyan, and his cheeks, calloused by the helmet and his neck and arms furrowed with cicatrices, denoted the professional paid warrior who had fought with indifference since childhood, now in the service of one nation and now in that of its adversary.

"I am in the service of Saguntum," said the Libyan. "These merchants pay better than those of Carthage. But, believe me, although content to live in this town, I realize that they have done an unlucky thing in displeasing Hannibal. Rome is strong, but Rome is far away, and that lion's whelp prowls only a few days journey from here. You ought to have known him, to have seen him from boyhood as I have done when I was fighting under the orders of his father Hamilcar! He runs like a mare; he fights as well on foot as on horseback, he eats what there is to be had, or he eats nothing at all; he goes about dressed like a slave; arms are his only luxury; he sleeps on the ground, and often, at daybreak, his father would find him lying among the sentinels of the camp. He is not content to be told about things, he must see everything with his own eyes, and mix with the enemy to study their weak points close at hand. Often Hasdrubal, his sister's husband, was surprised by seeing an old beggar come into his shop, and he would shout with laughter when Hannibal pulled off his wig and his rags, under cover of which he had been spending hours among the enemy."

Actæon left the tavern hastily on seeing that Rhanto, after handing her pitchers to a slave who loaded them into a cart, was starting on her walk toward Sónnica's villa.

"I will go with you, little one. You shall be my guide to your mistress' house."

The sun had begun to set. The afternoon light gilded the foliage of the domain, giving a transparency of amber to the leaves and vines. Along the highway through the champaign sounded the bells of the flock, the creaking of carts, and the sonorous songs of the rustics returning from the city.

They arrived at Sónnica's villa, which had the aspect of a town. They first passed the dwellings of the slaves, where buzzed around the doorways a swarm of nude children with prominent abdomens, and with the umbilicus protruding like buttons; then the stables, from which floated a warm vapor vibrant with lowing and whinnying; the granaries and farmhouses; the dwelling of the overseer; the calabooses for rebellious slaves, with their breathing-holes on a level with the ground; the pigeon-house, a high tower of red brick around which fluttered a cloud of white wings amid incessant cooing; the big straw huts which served to shelter the hundreds of chickens; and, behind this row of buildings, the country-seat, Sónnica's villa, which was discussed with admiration even among the most remote tribes of Celtiberia. It was surrounded by cypresses and laurels, encircled by walls covered with gnarled grape vines, while rising above the great mass of foliage were its rose-colored walls with columns and friezes of blue marble and the terrace crowned by polychrome statues with enameled eyes shining in the sun like precious stones.

Actæon was silent and preoccupied. Rhanto had been talking to him for full half an hour without receiving a reply.

"Look, stranger! All those fields which your eye can see belong to Sónnica. See, Greek, how many chickens! Nearly all the eggs used in the city come from here."

Actæon continued oblivious to the objects pointed out by the shepherdess; but just as she rang the bell on the garden gate, and was answered from within by the barking of dogs and the sharp cries of hidden birds, he smote himself nervously on the forehead as if he had made a discovery.

"Now I know who he is!" he exclaimed, as if awaking from a dream.

"Who?" asked the young girl in surprise.

"Nobody," he replied with the frigidity of him who fears that he has said too much.

In his own mind, however, he was satisfied with the identification. Recalling the words of the Libyan mercenary, overheard in the tavern, had brought back to his memory that enigmatic figure of the Celtiberian shepherd. Suddenly a light was kindled in his thought.

Now he knew who it was! For a good reason had he been impressed from the first moment by the glance of that unknown man, by the eyes which never change in a countenance despite the passing of years. Often had he seen those eyes in his childhood when his father made war in Sicily with Hamilcar, and he himself was being educated in Carthage.

That shepherd was Hannibal!