CHAPTER I

THE GARDENS OF THE GODDESS

The temple of Aphrodite-Astarte stood outside the gates of the city in an immense domain full of flowers and shadows, where the waters of the Nile flowed through seven aqueducts and maintained at all seasons a state of wonderful fertility.

This forest of flowers on the sea-shore, these deep streams, these lakes and shady meadows had been created in the desert by Ptolemy I. Since that time the sycamores planted by his orders had become giants; through the fertilizing influence of the waters the lawns had grown into meadows; the ponds had become enlarged into lakes; Nature had turned a park into a country.

The gardens were more than a valley, more than a country, more than a land; they were a complete world enclosed within walls of stone, and ruled by a Goddess who was the soul and centre of this universe. All around this domain arose a circular terrace. Its boundary was not a wall, it was a colossal city, consisting of fourteen hundred houses. A like number of courtesans dwelt in this holy city and represented in this spot alone seventy different races.

These sacred houses were uniform in design, and had upon each door the courtesan’s name who dwelt there.

Upon each side of the door were two rooms without walls upon the side next to the gardens. The room to the right was where the courtesan arrayed in all her finery sat to await the arrival of her visitors. The room on the left was at the disposal of those who wished to pass the night in the open air without sleeping on the grass.

On opening the door a passage gave entrance to a vast courtyard paved with marble, the middle of which was adorned by an oval basin. A peristyle provided the shade around this great square of light, and formed a zone of coolness for the entrance to the seven rooms of the house. At the back stood the altar which was of red granite.

Every woman had brought from her own country a little image of the Goddess, and as it stood there upon the altar of the house it was worshipped by each one in her own tongue. Lakmî Ashtoreth, Venus, Iskhtar, Freia, Mylitta, and Cypris were some of the holy names of their Divinity of Pleasure. Some worshipped the divinity in the symbolical shapes of a sea pebble, a conical stone, or a large prickly shell. In many of the houses there was upon a wooden stand a rough statuette with thin arms, large breasts, and huge thighs. They placed a myrtle branch at the feet of the idol, strewed the altar with rose-leaves, and burnt a grain of incense for each prayer which was granted. The Goddess was the confidante of all their sorrows, the witness of all their labours, and the supposed cause of all their pleasure. At the courtesan’s death the image was placed in her fragile coffin as a guardian of her tomb.

The most beautiful of these girls came from the kingdoms of Asia. Every year vessels bearing to Alexandria gifts from tributaries or allies landed besides their cargoes a hundred virgins chosen by the priests for the service of the sacred garden. They came from Mysia, Crete, Phrygia, Babylon, and the banks of the Ganges, and there were also Jewesses among them. Some were fair of skin with impassive faces and inflexible breasts; others were dark as the earth after rain, and had gold rings through their noses, and dark hair hanging down upon their shoulders. Some came from still more distant lands; they were slender, quiet little creatures, whose language no one understood and who looked like yellow monkeys. Their eyes were long, and their straight black hair was grotesquely arranged. These girls spent the whole of their lives like lost and frightened animals. They knew the gestures of love but declined to kiss upon the mouth. They amused themselves by playing childish games.

In a meadow apart, the fair and rosy daughters of the North lived together sleeping upon the grass. These were women from Sarmatia with triple-plaited hair, robust limbs, and square shoulders, who made themselves garlands of the branches of trees and wrestled among themselves for amusement; there were flat-nosed hairy Scythians and gigantic Teutons who terrified the Egyptians with their hair which was lighter than an old man’s and their flesh which was softer than a child’s; there were Gauls like animals, who laughed without reason, and young Celts with sea-green eyes, who never went out naked.

The women of Iberia, too, who had swarthy breasts, spent their days together. They had heavy masses of hair which was skilfully arranged and did not remove the hairs from their bodies. Their firm skins and strong limbs were much in favour with the Alexandrians. They were as often employed as dancers as taken for mistresses.

In the shade of the palm-trees dwelt the daughters of Africa, the Numidians veiled in white, the Carthaginians clad in black gauze, and Negresses clad in many-coloured costumes.

There were fourteen hundred women.

When a woman once entered the sacred garden, she never left it till the first day of her old age came upon her. She gave to the temple half of her gains and the rest sufficed for her food and perfumes.

They were not slaves and each one really possessed one of the Terrace houses; but all were not equally favoured and the more fortunate often purchased houses near their own which the owners sold to save themselves from growing thin through starvation. The latter then removed the image of their Divinity into the park and found an altar consisting of a flat stone, near which they took up their abode. The poor people knew this and sought out the women who slept in the open air near their altars; but sometimes they were neglected even by the poor, and then the unfortunate girls united in their misery, two and two, in a passionate friendship which became almost conjugal love, and shared their misfortunes.

Those without friends offered themselves as slaves to their more fortunate companions. They were forbidden to have in their service more than twelve of these poor girls, but these poor courtesans are mentioned as having the maximum number which was composed of a selection from many races.

If a courtesan bore a son, the child was taken into the precincts of the temple for the service of her divinity. When a daughter was born she was consecrated to the service of the Goddess. The first day of her life her symbolical marriage with the son of Dionysius was celebrated. Later she entered the Didascalion, a great school situated behind the temple where little girls learned in seven classes the theory and method of all the erotic arts; the glance, the embrace, the movements of the body, caresses and the secrets of the kiss. The pupil chose the day of her first experience because desire is a command from the Goddess which must not be disobeyed; on that day she received a house on the Terrace; and some of these children, though not yet nubile, were the most popular of all.

The interior of the Didascalion, the seven classes, the little theatre and the peristyle of the court were ornamented with ninety-two frescoes which comprised the teaching of love. They were the lifework of a man, Cleochares of Alexandria the natural son and disciple of Apelles, who had furnished them on his death-bed. Lately Queen Berenice, who was greatly interested in this famous school and had sent her little sisters there, had ordered from Demetrios a series of marble groups to complete the decoration; but only one of them had yet been placed in position in the infants’ school.

At the end of every year in the presence of all the famous courtesans, a great gathering took place at which there was extraordinary emulation among the women to win the twelve prizes offered, for they consisted of the entry into the Cotytteion, the greatest honour of which they ever dreamed.

This last monument was wrapped in such mystery that to-day it is not possible to give a detailed description of it. We only know that it was in the shape of a triangle the base of which was a temple to the Goddess Cotytto, in whose name frightful unheard-of debauchery was committed. The two other sides of the monument consisted of eighteen houses; thirty-six courtesans dwelt there, and were much sought after by wealthy lovers; they were the Baptes of Alexandria. Once every month, on the night of the full moon, they met within the temple maddened by aphrodisiacs. The oldest of the thirty-six had to take a fatal dose of the terrible erotogenous drug. The certainty of her immediate death made her try without fear all the dangerous pleasures from which the living recoil. Her body, which soon became covered with sweat, was the centre and model of the whirling orgie; in the midst of loud wailings, cries, tears and dancing the other naked women embraced her, mingled their hair in her sweat, rubbed themselves upon her burning skin and derived fresh ardour from the interrupted spasm of this furious agony. For three years these women lived in this way, and at the end of thirty-six months such was the intoxication of their end.

Other but less venerated sanctuaries had been built by the women in honour of the other names of Aphrodite. There was an altar consecrated to the Ouranian Aphrodite which received the chaste vows of sentimental courtesans; another to Aphrodite Apostrophia, where unfortunate love affairs were forgotten, and there were many others. But these separate altars were only efficacious and effective in the case of trivial desires. They were used day by day, and their favours were trivial ones. The suppliants who had their requests granted placed offerings of flowers on them, while those who were not satisfied spat upon them. They were neither consecrated nor maintained by the priests and consequently their profanation was not punishable.

The discipline of the Temple was very different.

The Temple, the Mighty Temple of the Great Goddess, the most holy place in the whole of Egypt, was a colossal edifice 336 feet in length with golden gates standing at the top of seventeen steps at the end of the gardens.

The entrance was not towards the East, but in the direction of Paphos, that is to say the north-west; the rays of the sun never penetrated directly into the Sanctuary. Eighty-six columns supported the architraves, they were all tinted with purple to half their height, and the upper part of each stood out with indescribable whiteness like the bust of a woman from her attire.

Within were placed sculptured groups representing many famous scenes, Europa and the Bull, Lêda and the Swan, the Siren and the dying Glaucos, the God Pan and a Hamadryad, and at the end of the frieze the sculptor was depicted modelling the Goddess Aphrodite herself.