Chapter II: Death in the Temple

Night on Crotona, night without a star.
I heard the mob, outside the Temple, roaring
_Death to Pythagoras! Death to those who know!_

Before the flushed white columns, in the glare
Of all those angry torches, Cylon stood
Wickedly smiling. “They have barred the doors.
Pythagoras and his forty chosen souls
Are all within. They are trapped, and they shall die.
It will be best to whet the people’s rage
Before we lay the axe, or set the torch
Against the Muses’ temple. One wild howl
Of ‘sacrilege’ may defeat us.”—This he called
“Faith in the people.”
He moistened his dry lips,
And raised his hand. The savage clamouring ceased.
One breathless moment, ere he spoke, he paused,
Gathering his thoughts. His thin white weasel face
Narrowed, his eyes contracted. In their pain
—Pain pitiable, a torment of the mind—
A bitter memory burned, of how he sued
To join that golden brotherhood in vain.
For when the Master saw him, he discerned
A spirit in darkness, violent, empty of thought,
But full of shallow vanity, cunning lies,
Intense ambition.
All now was turned to hate;
Hate the destroyer of men, the wrecker of cities,
The last disease of nations; hate, the fire
That eats away the heart; hate, the lean rat
That gnaws the brain, till even reason glares
Like madness through blind eyes; hate, the thin snake
That coils like whip-cord round the victim’s soul
And strangles it; hate, that slides up through his throat,
And with its flat and quivering head usurps
The function of his tongue,—to sting and sting,
Till all that poison which is now his life
Is drained, and he lies dead; hate, that still lives,
And for the power to strike and sting again,
May yet destroy this world.
So Cylon stood,
Quivering a moment, in the fiery glare,
Over the multitude.
Then, in his right hand,
He shook a roll of parchment over his head,
Crying, _The Master said it_!
At that word,
A snarl, as of a myriad-throated beast,
Broke out again, and deepened into a roar—
_Death to Pythagoras! Death to those who know!_

Cylon upheld his hand, as if to bless
A stormy sea with calm. The howling died
Into a deadly hush. With twisted lips
He spoke.

“This is their Scroll, the Sacred Word,
The Secret Doctrine of their Golden Order!
Hear it!”
Then, interweaving truth with lies,
Till even the truth struck like a venomed dart
Into his hearers’ minds, he read aloud
His cunningly chosen fragments.
At the end,
He tore the scroll, and trampled it underfoot.
“Ye have heard,” he said. “Ye are kin to all the beasts!
And, when ye die, your souls again inhabit
Bodies of beasts, wild beasts, and beasts of burden.
Even yet more loathsome—he that will not starve
His flesh, and tame himself and all mankind
To bear this golden yoke shall, after death,
Dwell in the flesh of swine. He that rejects
This wisdom shall, hereafter, seek the light
Through endless years, with toads, asps, creeping things.
Thus would they exile all our happier gods!
Away with Bacchus and his feasts of joy!
Back, Aphrodite, to your shameful foam!
Men must be tamed, like beasts.
The Master said it!
And wherefore? There are certain lordly souls
Who rise above the beasts, and talk with gods.
These are his Golden Brotherhood; these must rule!
Ye heard that verse from Homer—whom he loves—
Homer, the sycophant, who could call a prince
‘The shepherd of his people.’ What are ye,
Even in this life, then, but their bleating flocks?
_The Master said it!_
Homer—his demi-god,
Ye know his kind; ye know whence Homer sprang;
An old blind beggarman, singing for his food,
Through every city in Greece”—(This Cylon called
Honouring the people)—“already he is outworn,
Forgotten, without a word for this young age;
And great Pythagoras crowns him!
When they choose
Their Golden Brotherhood, they lay down their laws,
Declaring none may rule until he learn,
Prostrate himself in reverence to the dead,
And pass, through golden discipline, to power
Over himself and you; but—mark this well—
Under Pythagoras! Discipline! Ah, that path
Is narrow and difficult. Only three hundred souls,
Aristocrats of knowledge, have attained
This glory. It is against the people’s will
To know, or to acknowledge those that know,
Or let their knowledge lead them for one hour.
For see—see how the gods have driven them mad,
Even in their knowledge! In their own Sacred Scroll,
Pythagoras, who derives you from the beasts,
Affirms that earth, this earth beneath our feet,
Spins like a little planet round the sun!”

A brutal bellowing, as of Asian bulls,
Boomed from a thousand mouths. (This Cylon called
The laughter of the people and their gods.)
He raised his hand. It ceased.
“_This_ is their knowledge,
And _this_,” he cried, “their charter to obscure
What all men know, the natural face of things.
_This_ proves their right to rule us from above.
They meet here nightly. Nightly they conspire
Against your rights, your liberties, and mine.
Was it not they who, when the people rose
In Sybaris, housed her noble fugitives here?
And was it not Pythagoras who refused
To send them back to Sybaris and their death?
Was it not this that plunged us into war
With Sybaris; and, when victory crowned our arms,
Who but Pythagoras robbed us of its fruits?
We gathered booty, and he called it theft.
We burned their palaces, and he called it hate.
We avenged our sons. He called it butchery,
And said the wild beast wakes again in man.
What have we gained, then? Nothing but the pride
Of saving those Pythagoras wished to save;
Counting gold dross, and serving his pure gods.
_The Master said it._ What is your judgment, then?”
He stretched one hand, appealing to the crowd,
And one to the white still Temple.
“_Death! Death! Death!_”
Under the flaring torches, the long waves
Of tense hot faces opened a thousand mouths,
Little blue pits of shadow that raced along them,
And shook the red smoke with one volleying roar,—
_Death to Pythagoras! Death to those who know!_

...

But, in the Temple, through those massive walls,
While Cylon spoke, no whisper had been heard;
Only, at times, a murmur, when he paused,
As of a ninth wave breaking, far away.

The half-moon of the Muses, crowned with calm,
Towered through the dimness. Under their giant knees,
In their immortal shadow, those who knew
How little was their knowledge waited death
Proudly, around their Master. Robed in white,
Beautiful as Apollo in old age,
He stood amongst them, laying a gentle hand,
One last caress, upon that dearest head
Bowed there before him, his own daughter’s hair.
Then, tenderly, the god within him moved
His mortal lips; and, in the darkness there,
He spoke, as though the music of the spheres
Welled from his heart, to ease the hurts of death.

“Not tears, belovèd. Give it welcome, rather!
Soon, though they spared us, this blind flesh would fail.
They are saving us the weary mile or two
That end a dusty journey. The dull stains
Of travel; the soiled vesture; the sick heart
That hoped at every turning of the road
To see the Perfect City, and hoped in vain,
Shall grieve us now no more. Now, at the last,
After a stern novitiate, iron test,
And grinding failures, the great light draws near,
And we shall pass together, through the Veil.”

He bowed his head. It was their hour of prayer;
And, from among the Muses in the dark,
A woman’s voice, a voice in ecstasy,
As if a wound should bless the sword that made it,
Breathed through the night the music of their law:

_Close not thine eyes in sleep_
_Till thou hast searched thy memories of the day,_
_Graved in thy heart the vow thou didst not keep,_
_And called each wandering thought back to the way._

_Pray to the gods! Their aid,_
_Their aid alone can crown thy work aright;_
_Teach thee that song whereof all worlds were made;_
_Rend the last veil, and feed thine eyes with light._

_Naught shall deceive thee, then._
_All creatures of the sea and earth and air,_
_The circling stars, the warring tribes of men_
_Shall make one harmony, and thy soul shall hear._

_Out of this prison of clay_
_With lifted face, a mask of struggling fire,_
_With arms of flesh and bone stretched up to pray,_
_Dumb, thou shalt hear that Voice of thy desire._

_Thou that wast brought so low;_
_And through those lower lives hast risen again,_
_Kin to the beasts, with power at last to know_
_Thine own proud banishment and diviner pain;_

_Courage, O conquering soul!_
_For all the boundless night that whelms thee now,_
_Though worlds on worlds into that darkness roll,_
_The gods abide; and of their race art thou!_

There was a thunder of axes at the doors;
A glare as of a furnace; and the cry,
_Death to Pythagoras! Death to those who know!_

Then, over the streaming smoke and the wild light
That like a stormy sunset sank away
Into a darker night, the deeper mist
Rolled down, and of that death I knew no more.

II

ARISTOTLE