Part 8 (1/2)
The stewards distributed money among the beggars. Lucius had gone on board. The slave-girls scattered flowers before his feet as he walked.
The song of the rowers was heard from the body of the boat. The creaking ropes were cast off; the barge glided towards the middle of the lake. She gleamed with blue, green and yellow lights and left a trail of brightness in her wake; the water was bright around her. On the banks the villas and palaces of light stood in gardens of light.
Hundreds of other barges were gliding slowly in the same direction. Above the monotonous drone of the rowers' song rang ballads and hymns. The music of citharas was heard in descending chords; the harps rang out; the notes of double flutes quavered through the evening air with a magic intoxication of melody.
The waters of the lake stood high. It was the month when the kindly Nile stepped outside its banks with a moist foot and overflowed the Delta. The golden waters of the lake lapped higher than the marble steps of the villas down which the brilliant hetairae descended, holding the lappets of their veils, to take their seats on the cus.h.i.+ons of their barges.
Flowers fell on the water, in unison with the notes of hymn and song. All the craft, hundreds and hundreds, large and small, barges and coracles, square rafts and canoes, pressed gently forward towards the entrance of the Canopian Ca.n.a.l. On the banks were thousands of idlers and spectators, all the people of Alexandria.
The vessels glided to the harmony of the tw.a.n.ged strings into the broad ca.n.a.l. It was very full of water; the banks were flooded. Reeds tall as a man, biblos and cyamos, rose like pillars, blossoming during this month with thousands of waving plumes: the leaves of the biblos were long and bending over, as though each were languidly broken; those of the cyamos were round as scales and goblet-deep, stacked one above the other along the stems, like cups. [1] In the light on the barges, golden patches glowed among the stalks; and the reeds and rushes blossomed up as though out of molten gold.
Here lay the Canopian harbour, here the suburb of Eleusis; and the ca.n.a.l split into two branches. The narrower channel led to Schedia, on the Nile; the broader led past Nicopolis to Canopus.
Beyond stretched the sea, wide and blue. Only a narrow strip of land separated it from the ca.n.a.l; and it lay boundless under a thousand twinkling stars.
”Lucius,” said Thrasyllus, sitting spell-bound at the feet of the young Roman, who sat on a raised throne and gazed in front of him like a priest, full of longing for his dream of that night, ”Lucius, my Lord Catullus, look! We have pa.s.sed Nicopolis, with its amphitheatre and stadium; and yonder lies Taposiris, with Cape Zephyrium; and on a height I can see the temple of Aphrodite Arsinoe.”
”I see,” said Lucius, turning his eyes towards the temple, which was lit with lines of fire and rose above the water like a mansion in Olympus.
”I see,” echoed Uncle Catullus, seated by Lucius' side.
”I was reading,” Thrasyllus explained, ”that at the same place where that temple now stands there once stood the city of Thonis, named after the king who hospitably entreated Menelaus and Helen. Homer mentions it and speaks of the secret herbs and precious balsams which Helen received from Queen Polyd.a.m.na, Thonis' spouse.”
”You know everything, Thrasyllus,” said Uncle Catullus, warmly, ”and it is a joy to travel with you.”
”Tell the slave from Cos to sing the Hymn to Aphrodite as we row past the G.o.ddess' temple,” said Lucius.
Thrasyllus went to Cora and communicated the master's order. Forthwith a group of singers and dancers rose to their feet. Cora herself struck the resounding chords. And she sang:
”Mother of Eros, hear thy slave!
”Child of the foam, great G.o.ddess of love, Aphrodite, look down from above!
Thou, who dost madden the G.o.ds with desire, Thou, who fulfillest men's hearts with thy fire, All but the heart of my lord that I crave, Hark to thy slave!”
She stood as one inspired while she sang, with her fingers on the chords, facing the temple. Around her the girls danced to the song. The movements of their lithe bodies, light as the ripple of a silken scarf in the breeze, met and dissolved in picture after picture with each word of the song. The singer's voice swelled crystal-clear. From the bank of the ca.n.a.l, from the open houses, on the temple-steps the people listened to her song. In the tall reeds lay smaller boats, wherein a man and woman embraced in love. Their hands thrust aside the yielding stems; and their smiles glanced at Cora.
”All but the heart of my lord that I crave, Hark to thy slave!”
the other singers now sang after her.
”She sings well,” said Lucius.
Cora heard him. She blushed crimson between the great rose-coloured flowers at her temples. But she behaved as though she had heard nothing. And she sat down quietly among her companions, at the foot of the silver statue of Aphrodite.