Empire - Saylor Steven (книги без сокращений TXT) 📗
“And his brother?”
“I haven’t met Domitian. But to me it seems he is not like a lamp at all. He is an extinguisher of lamps. He brings darkness, not light.”
“I wonder how much longer his reign of darkness will last.”
Apollonius shrugged. “The man is only forty-two.”
“That was the age at which Titus died.”
“Yes, but Vespasian lived to be sixty-two.”
“Twenty more years of Domitian!” exclaimed Lucius.
“Perhaps,” said Apollonius. “Or perhaps not.”
Lucius reclined on his couch in the garden, his eyes shut, smelling the flowers, thinking of how his life had changed in the year since he had met the Teacher.
He felt the warmth of the sun on his bare feet. Apollonius had taught him to go barefoot. What need had a man for shoes in his own house? Sometimes Lucius even went to the Forum barefoot. Others stared at him as if he were mad.
“Are you dreaming?” said Apollonius. He had excused himself for a moment to empty his bladder in the small latrina off the garden. The Teacher had a body just like those of other men, and was subject to the same needs to ingest and expel as dictated by the endlessly repeating cycles of mortal flesh.
“The others will arrive soon,” said Lucius, wishing it were not so. He treasured time alone with the Teacher, listening to his stories, asking him questions, simply enjoying his tranquil presence. But Apollonius had many friends, and it sometimes fell to Lucius to play host to the others in his home. He was expecting perhaps fifty men and women. They would be of all social ranks, from freedmen to patricians like himself. There would probably be a few senators among them, but also shopkeepers and artisans and bricklayers. No one who wished to hear Apollonius speak was turned away.
Lucius looked at the Teacher and smiled. To a careless observer, Apollonius might appear to be nothing more than a doddering old man. But such were the illusions of the material world: appearances meant nothing. Emulating Apollonius, Lucius had begun to eschew the services of his barber. His hair had never been so long, and never before had he sported a beard. At the age of forty-six, Lucius had only a few touches of silver in his hair, but someday he might hope to have a beard as fleece-white as that of the Teacher.
“What story will you tell the gathering today?” asked Lucius.
“I was thinking I might talk about my time in Ethiopia.”
Lucius nodded. The Teacher’s stories about Ethiopia were among Lucius’s favourites.
“I thought in particular I might tell the story of my encounter with the satyr, since most people nowadays have never seen a satyr and have various misconceptions about the creatures.”
Lucius sat upright. “You met a satyr in Ethiopia? I’ve never heard that story.”
“Could it be that I never told you?”
“Never! I’m sure I would have remembered.”
“Well, then. It was during my journey to the see the great lake from whence the Nile originates. On its shores one finds a colony of the naked sages, who are wiser than Greek philosophers but not quite so wise as the sages of India, to whom they are kin. They welcomed me heartily, but I could see they were in distress, and I asked the cause.
“Nightly, they were plagued by the visitations of a wild creature, a being that was goat-like from the waist down, with shaggy hind legs and hooves, and man-like from the waist up, but with goat horns and pointed ears. From their description I deduced it was a satyr, a being previously unknown in those parts. This satyr interrupted the sleep of the sages, tramping outside their huts and bleating in the middle of the night. When they confronted the satyr and complained, the creature made rude noises and obscene gestures. When they attempted to apprehend him, he proved to be swifter than even the swiftest among them, leaping and careening and causing them to trip over one another and make fools of themselves.
“The sages took me to a nearby village, where the elders informed me that the satyr’s incursions there were far more serious. At least once a month, always by night, he intruded upon the comeliest and most nubile of the women, muttering incantations in their ears while they slept, putting them under a spell and luring them into the woods. A few of the women had awakened from this spell and dared to resist him, whereupon the creature physically attacked them, strangling them and trampling them with his hooves. Two women had been killed in this way, and others had been seriously injured. The villagers were terrified of the satyr.”
“What did you do to help those people, Teacher?”
“I recalled my studies of a rare book left to us by King Midas, who was known to have a bit of satyr blood in his own veins, as could be seen by the shape of his ears. Occasionally his satyr relatives imposed on Midas’s hospitality, making chaos of his court with their wild behaviour. But as a child Midas had been told by his mother of a way to deal with satyrs, which he put to the test. Wine has a peculiar effect on them. When a satyr imbibes, he becomes intoxicated, as men do, and eventually he falls fast asleep, snoring loudly, as men do. But when the satyr awakens from this drunken stupor, his animal nature has departed from him and he is as harmless as a child. Such a tame satyr is capable of being taught to speak and even to reason. The widespread reformation of satyrs is no doubt one reason they are so very rarely seen nowadays, since such satyrs are more afraid of humans than are humans of them.
“But a wild satyr has a great aversion to wine, so the challenge is to trick him into drinking it. The villagers had reason to think this satyr drank at night from a particular cattle trough. The chief of the village had a jar of Egyptian wine left over from a recent festival. At my instruction, every drop of wine was emptied into the trough one night. In the morning it could be seen that a substantial part of the mixture of water and wine had been drunk.
“The satyr was asleep in his lair, no doubt, but where was that? I traversed the area all around the village, pricking up my ears, listening for the sound of snoring. At last I heard a faint noise. I followed it to a place the locals called the Grotto of the Nymphs. There, lying on a mossy stone amid the reeds, snoring loudly, lay the satyr, fast asleep and stinking of wine.
“The villagers were eager to awaken him, but I thought it best that he should be allowed to come to his senses in his own time. An hour later, quite abruptly, he ceased snoring, rubbed his eyes, and stood upright. The villagers were of a mind to stone him, and even began to gather up suitable rocks, but I shielded him with my own body and told the villagers they must do no harm to the creature, for now he was a changed satyr and his days of mischief were behind him. That night, at a blessedly sober festival – for all the wine was gone – the naked sages danced for the villagers, and the satyr joined them, leaping and somersaulting in the air.”
Lucius smiled. The scent of jasmine under the hot sun was intoxicating. “If I heard such a tale from any other man, I wouldn’t believe it for a moment,” he said. “But from you, Teacher-”
Hilarion rushed into the garden. From his look of alarm, he was not there to announce the arrival of the guests.
“Praetorian Guards!” he said. “They refused to wait in the vestibule-”
Armed men entered the garden.
“You must be Apollonius of Tyana,” said an officer. “I’d think this hairy fellow was your son, if I didn’t know better,” he said, smirking at Lucius. “I should think a well-born patrician could find a better teacher to model himself on, or at least one who was better groomed. But don’t worry, we’ll relieve you both of those ridiculous beards soon enough.”
Lucius was snatched up by the guards and dragged from his house. He and Apollonius were marched barefoot through the streets, towards the imperial palace, while his neighbours, alerted by the commotion, looked on. Some were aghast, but others looked smugly pleased. Lucius’s disdain for social functions, his eccentric new appearance, and his disreputable-looking visitors had caused a scandal among his well-connected neighbours on the Palatine.
