Part 14

“It was very different. It wanted the power and massive grandeur of the Zeus; but in its dignity and serenity it had a wondrous charm. It was the true type of wisdom, calm above doubt, and with a gentle severity of aspect, as if, undisturbed by the tormenting questions that vex humanity, it saw the eternal truth of things. When I compare with these wondrous statues your best representations of your divinities, I cannot but feel how vast a difference there is; and when in your temples one sees the prostrate figures of men and women clinging to vulgar and degraded images of saints, imploring aid and protection from them, and soliciting their interposition against the avenging hand of Deity, I cannot see that you are better than we.”

“But, after all, through this there is a belief in a pure and infinite Being beyond—a Being beyond all human passion; not imperfect and subject to wild caprices, and capable of abominable acts.”

“You see, we go back to the same question,” he replied. “You profess to worship a God above nature, and yet your prayers are to Christ, the man; to the saints, who were lower men and women; and you cling to these as mediators. Well; and we also believed in a spirit and power undefined and above all, whose nature we could not grasp, and who expressed himself in every living thing. Our gods were but anthropomorphic symbols of special powers and developments of an infinite and overruling power. They partly represent, in outward shape and form, philosophic ideas and human notions about the infinite God, and partly body forth the phenomena of nature, that hint at the great ultimate cause behind them, of which they are, so to speak, the outward garment, by which the Universal Deity is made visible to man. In our religion nature was but the veil which half hid the divine powers. Everywhere they peered out upon us, from grove and river, from night and morning, from lightning and storm, from all the elements and all the changes and mysteries of the living universe. It delighted us to feel their absolute, active presence among us—not far away from us, involved in utter obscurity, and beyond our comprehension. We saw the Great Cause in its second plane, close to us, in the growing of the flower, in the flowing of the stream, in the drifting of the cloud, in the rising and setting of the sun. Our gods (representing the great idea beyond, and doing its work) were anthropomorphic by necessity, just as yours are in art. The popular fables are but the mythical garb behind which lie great facts and truths. They are symbolical representations of the great processes of nature, of the laws of life and growth, of the changes of the seasons, of the strife of the elements. Apollo was the life-giving sun; Artemis, the mysterious moon; Ceres and Proserpine, the burial of the grain in the earth, and its reappearance and fructification. So, on another plane, Minerva was the philosophic mind of man; Venus, the impassioned embodiment of human love, as Eros was of spiritual affections; Bacchus, the serene and full enjoyment of nature. We but divided philosophically what you sum up in one final cause; but all our divisions looked back to that cause. In an imaginative people like the Greeks, there is also a natural tendency to mythical embodiment of facts in history as well as in nature; and in the early periods, when little was written down, traditions easily assumed the myth form. Ideas were reduced to visible shapes, and facts were etherealized into ideas and imaginatively transformed. The story of Diana and Endymion, of Cupid and Psyche, will always be true—not to the reason, but to the imagination. It expresses poetically a sentiment which cannot die. So, also, what matters it if Dædalus built a ship for Icarus, and Icarus was simply drowned? Sublimed into poetry, it became a myth, and Icarus flew on waxen wings across the sea. All poetry is thus allegorical. The wind will always have wings until it ceases to blow. These myths are simply poetic moulds of thought, in which vague sentiments, ideas, and facts are wrought together into an express shape. Think what your own literature or thought would be without the old Grecian poems. Let the reason reject them as it will, and drive them out into the cold, the imagination will run forth and bring them back again to warm and cherish them on its breast. Facts, as facts, are but dead husks. The spirit cannot live upon them. Besides, are not our myths enchanting? Could anything take their place? Can science, peering into all things, ever find the secrets of nature? After all its explorations, the final element of life, the motive and inspiring element that is the essence of all the organism it uses and without which all is mere material, mere machinery, flees utterly beyond its reach, and leaves it at last with only dust in its hands. Does not the little child that makes playmates of the flowers, and the brooks, and the sands, find God there better than any of us? The subtle divinity hides anywhere, entices everywhere, is just out of reach everywhere. We catch glimpses of it, breathe its odor, hear its dim voice, see the last flutter of its robe, pursue it endlessly, and never can seize it. The poet is poet because he loves this spirit in nature, and comes nearer it; but he cannot grasp it; and for all his pursuit he comes back laden at last with a secret he cannot quite tell, and shapes us a myth to express it as well as he may.”

“But surely,” I answered, “we should distinguish between mere poetry and fact—between science and fancy. So long as we admit the unreality of merely fanciful creations and explanations of facts, we may be pleased with them; but let us not be misled by them into a belief of their scientific truth.”

“Ah, ’tis the old story! The little child has a bit of wood, which to her, in the free play of her imagination, is a person with good and bad qualities, who acts well or ill, whom she loves or despises. She whips it; she caresses it; she scolds it; she sends it to school or to bed; she forgives it and fondles it. All is real to the child; more real, perhaps, than to the nurse who stands beside her and laughs at her, and says, ‘How silly! come away! it is only a stick!’ Which is right? The Greeks were the child, and you are the nurse. What is truth, which is always on our lips—truth of history, truth of science, truth of any kind? Who knows—history? Two persons standing together see the same occurrence; is it the same to both? Far from it. The literal friend is amazed to hear what the imaginative friend saw. Yet both may be right in their report, only one saw what the other had no senses to perceive. We only see and feel according to our natures. What we are modifies what we see. Out of the camomile flower the physician makes a decoction, and the poet a song. History is but a dried herbarium of withered facts, unless the imagination interpret them. I cannot but smile at what is called history; and of all history, that of our own Roman world seems the strangest, because, perhaps, I know it best.”

“Ah!” I broke in, “how one wishes you had written us familiar memoirs of your time, and given us some intimate insight into your life, your thoughts, your daily doings. We have so to grope about in the dark for any knowledge of you. And then, in the history of art, what dreadful blanks! I do not feel assured, except from your ‘Meditations,’ as we call them, and your letters, that we really know anything accurately about you. About the Thundering Legion, for instance,—what is the truth?”

“There,” he answered, “is an instance of the ease with which a fable is made, and how a simple fact may be tortured into an untruth merely to suit a purpose. When I was on my campaign against the Quadi, in the year 174, the incident to which you refer happened. The spring had been cold and late, and suddenly the heats of summer overtook us in the enemy’s country. After a long and difficult march on a very hot day, we suddenly came upon the enemy, who, descending from the mountains, attacked us, overcome with fatigue, in the plains. The battle went against us for some time, for my army suffered so from thirst and heat and exhaustion that they were unable to repel the attack, and were forced back. While they were in full retreat and confusion, suddenly the sky became clouded over, and a drenching shower poured upon us. My men, who were dying of thirst, stopped fighting, took off their helmets and reversed their shields to catch the rain, and while they were thus engaged the enemy renewed their assault with double fury. All seemed lost, when suddenly, as sometimes occurs among the mountains, a fierce wind swept down with terrible peals of thunder and vivid flashes of lightning; the rain changed into hail, which was blown and driven with such a fury into the faces of the enemy that they were confounded and confused, and began in their turn to fall back. My own men, having the storm only on their backs, refreshed by the rain they had drunken from their shields and helmets, and cooled by their bath, now anew attacked, and, pouring upon their foe with fury, cut them to pieces. Among my soldiers at this time there was an old legion, organized in the time of Augustus, named the Fulminata, from the fact that they bore on their shields a thunderbolt; upon this simple fact was founded the story, repeated by many early writers in the Christian Church, that this legion was composed of Christians only, that the storm was a miraculous interposition of their God in answer to their prayer, and that they then received the name of Fulminata, in commemoration of this miracle. This is the simple truth of the case. My men said that Jupiter Pluvius came to their aid, and they sacrificed to him in gratitude; and on the column afterwards dedicated to me by the Senate in commemoration of my services, you will see the sculptured figure of Jupiter Pluvius, from whose beard, arms, and head the water is streaming to refresh my soldiers, while his thunderbolts are flashing against the barbarians.”

As he spoke these words, a flash of lightning, so intense as to blind the lamps, gleamed through the room, followed by a startling peal of thunder, which seemed to shake not only the house but the sky above us.

He smiled and said, “We should have said in older time that Jupiter affirmed the truth of my statement; but you are above such puerilities, I suppose.”

“Certainly I should not say it was a sign from Jupiter. The thunder was on the left, and that was considered by you a good omen, was it not?

‘Et cœli genitor de parte serena Intonuit lævum.’”

“This thunder on the left was considered a good omen. But what was it you said after you asked the question? You seemed to be making a quotation in a strange tongue—at least a tongue I never heard.”

“That was Latin,” I answered, blushing a little, “and from Virgil—Virgilius, perhaps I ought to say, or perhaps Maro.”

“Ah! Latin, was it?” he said. “I beg your pardon; I thought it might have been a charm to avert the Evil Eye that you were uttering.”

“As difficult to understand as the Eleusinian mysteries,” I said. “And, by the way, what were the Eleusinian mysteries?”

“They were mysteries! I can merely say to you that they concealed under formal rites the worship of the spirit of nature, as symbolized in Demeter and Persephone and Dionysos. In their purest and hidden meaning, they represented the transformation, purification, and resurrection of humanity in a new form and in another existence. But I am not at liberty to say more than this. The outward rites were for the multitude, the inner meaning for the highest and most developed minds. Were it permitted to me to explain them to you, I think you would not take so low a view of our religious philosophy as you now seem to have. What you hear and read of was merely the outward and mystical drama, with its lustrations and fasting, and cakes of sesame and honey, and processions—as symbolical in its way as your mass and baptism, and having as pure a significance.

“But,” he continued, “to revert to the questions which we were previously discussing. It seems to me that in certain respects your faith is not even so satisfactory as ours; for its tendency is to degrade the present in view of the future, and to debase humanity in its own view. With us life was not considered disgraceful, nor man a mean and contemptible creature. We did not systematically humiliate ourselves and cringe before the divine powers, but strove to stand erect, and not to forget that we were made by God after his own image. We did not affect that false humility which in the view of the ancient philosophers was contemptible—nay, even we thought that the pride of humility was of all the most despicable. We sought to keep ourselves just, obedient to our best instincts, temperate and simple, looking upon life as a noble gift of the gods, to be used for noble purposes. We believed, beside this, that virtue should be practiced for itself, and not through any hope of reward or any fear of punishment here or hereafter. To act up to our highest idea of what was right was our principle, not out of terror or in the hope of conciliating God, but because it was right; and to look calmly on death, not as an evil, but as a step onward to another existence. To desire nothing too much; to hold one’s self equal to any fate; to keep one’s self in harmony with nature and with one’s own nature; calmly to endure what is inevitable, steadily to abstain from all that is wrong; to remember that there is no such thing as misfortune to the brave and wise, but only phantasms that falsely assume these shapes to shake the mind; that when what we wish does not happen, we should wish what does happen; that God hath given us courage, magnanimity, and fortitude, so that we may stand up against invasions of evil and bear misfortune,—such were our principles, and they enabled us to live heroic lives, vindicating the nobility of human nature, and not despising it as base and lost; believing in the justice of God and not in his caprice and enmity to any of us, and having no ignoble fear of the future.”

“But are not these principles for the most part ours?” I answered. “Do we not believe that virtue is the grand duty of man? Do none of us seek to live heroic lives, and sacrifice ourselves to do good to the world and to our brothers?”

“Certainly, you lead heroic lives; but your great principle is humility—your great motive, reward or fear. You profess to look on this life as mean and miserable, and on yourselves as creatures of the dust; and you declare that you have no claim to be saved from eternal damnation by leading a just life, but only by a capricious election hereafter. You profess that your God is a God of love, and you attribute to Him enmity and injustice of which you yourself would be ashamed. You think you are to be saved because Christ died on the cross for you, and you are not sure of it even then. But with us every one deserved to be tried on his own merits, and to expiate his own errors and crimes.”

“It is supposed by some that you were half a Christian yourself. Is this so?”

“If you mean that I reverenced the life and doctrines of Christ, and saw in Him a pure man, I certainly did. But in my principles I was a Stoic purely, and it is only as a philosopher that I admired the character of Christ. You think the principles He preached were new; they were really as old as the world, almost. His life was blameless, and He sacrificed his life for his principles; and for this I reverence Him, but no further. His followers, however, were far less pure and self-denying, and they sought power and endeavored to overthrow the state.”

“Was it for this you persecuted them?” I said.

“I did not persecute them,” he answered. “As Christians they were perfectly free in Rome. All religions were free, and all admitted. No one was interfered with merely for his religious belief and worship, whether it were that of Isis, of Mithras, of Jehovah, or of any other deity. It was only when the Christians endeavored to attain to power and provoke disturbance in the state, to abuse authority and set at defiance the laws, that it became necessary—or at all events was considered necessary—to stop them. When they were not content with worshiping according to their own creed, but aggressively denounced the popular worship as damnable, and sought to cast public contempt on all gods but their own, they outraged the public sense as much as if any one now should denounce Christ as a vagabond, and seek by abuse to overthrow your church by all sorts of blasphemous language. Nor would it matter in the least in your own time that any person so outraging decency should be absolutely honest in his intentions, and assured in his own mind of the truth of his own doctrines. Suppose one step further,—that any set of men should not only undertake to turn Christ into ridicule publicly, but should also abuse the government and conspire to overthrow the monarchy. You would then have a case similar to that of the Christians in my day. At all events, it was believed that it was a settled plan with them to overthrow the empire, and it was for this that they were, as you call it, persecuted. For my own part, I was sorry for it, deeming in such matters it was better to take no measures so severe; but I personally had nothing to do with it. It was the fanatical zeal of the government, who, acting without my commands, took advantage of ancient laws to punish the Christians; and this your own Tertullian will prove to you. They undoubtedly supposed that the Christians were endeavoring to create a political and social revolution,—that they were in fact Communists, as you would now call them, intent upon overthrowing the state. I confess that there was a good deal of color given to such a judgment by the conduct of the Christians. But as for myself, as I said, I was opposed to any movement against them, believing them all to be honest of purpose, though perhaps somewhat excited and fanatical.”

“Why did you think that they were Communists?” I asked. “Had you any sufficient grounds for such a belief?”

“Surely; the most ample grounds in the very teachings of Christ himself. His system was essentially communistic, and nothing else. His followers and disciples were all Communists; they all lived in common, had a common purse, and no one was allowed to own anything. They were ordered by Christ not to labor, but to live from day to day, and take no heed of the future, and lay up nothing, but to sell all they had, and live like the ravens. Christ himself denounced riches constantly—not the wrong use of riches, but the mere possession of them; and said it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to inherit the kingdom of heaven,—not a bad rich man, observe, but any rich man. So, too, his story of Lazarus and Dives turns on the same point. It does not appear that Lazarus was good, but only that he was poor; nor does it appear that Dives was bad, but only that he was rich; and when Dives in Hades prays for a drop of water, he is told that he had the good things in his lifetime, and Lazarus the evil things, and that _therefore_ he is now tormented, and Lazarus is comforted.”

“But, surely,” I answered, “it was intended to mean that Dives had not used his riches properly?”

“Nothing is said of the kind, or even intimated; for all that appears, Dives may have been a good man, and Lazarus not. The only apparent virtue of Lazarus is, that he was a beggar; the only fault of Dives, that he was rich. Do you not remember, also, the rich young man who desired to become one of Christ’s followers, and asked what he should do to be saved? Christ told him that doing the commandments, and being virtuous and honest, was not enough; but that he must sell all that he had, and give it to the poor, and then he could follow Him, and not otherwise; and the rich good man was very sorrowful, and went away. What does all this mean but Communism? Yes; the system He would carry out was community of goods, and He would permit no one to have possessions of his own. This struck at the roots of all established law and rights of property, and naturally made his sect feared and hated among certain classes in Rome.”

“I am astonished,” I said, “to find that you have so carefully studied the records of the teachings and doctrines of Christ.”