Imaginary LIves (4 page)

“Or if that cannot be, let us both be plunged into the shadows. Let Anteros chill the breath of us if he must quench this fire Eros has kindled! Perfumed death, drink the libation of my voice. 
Achrammachalala!
”

Then the mummy of the virgin descended into the earth, teeth bared and gleaming.

And Septima walked shamefully between the tombs of the dead until the second watch of the night. Her eyes followed the flight of the moon across the sky. Her throat felt the biting brine of the sea wind. When the first golden rays of dawn touched her she returned to Hadrumetum, her long blue veils floating behind her.

Meanwhile Phoinissa sped down the infernal paths, but the hawk-faced one would not listen to her plea. Hathor only stretched herself in her painted case, unheeding. And Phoinissa could not find Anteros, for she had never known desire. But in her faded heart she felt that pity all the dead feel for the living. On the second night, at the hour when the departed return to cast their enchantments, her bandaged feet rustled again through the streets of Hadrumetum.

Sextilius lay breathing the deep, regular breath of sleep, his face turned towards the paneled ceiling of the chamber. All wrapped in her odorous cloths of the tomb, dead Phoinissa sat down beside his bed. She had neither brain nor entrails, though her heart was there, where it had been replaced, dry, in her mummied breast.

And at that moment Eros struck against Anteros, seizing the dead heart of Phoinissa, making her desire the body of Sextilius to sleep between her sister and herself in the house of death.

Phoinissa put her lips to the boy’s mouth and the life went out of him like a burst bubble. In her sister’s cell she took Septima by the hand. And the kiss of Phoinissa and the clasp of Phoinissa killed them both, Septima and Sextilius, in the same hour.

Such was the dark issue of the struggle between Eros and Anteros, wherefrom the infernal powers received a slave and a freeman.

Sextilius rests in the Necropolis at Hadrumetum between Septima, the enchantress, and her sister Phoinissa. The words of Septima’s enchantment are inscribed upon a leaden plaque which the enchantress lowered into Phoinissa’s tomb through the little hole intended for libations.

LUCRETIUS

Poet

Lucretius belonged to a great family long retired from public life. Memories of his early days recall the dark porch of a house far up on a mountain, bleak atrium and silent slaves. From childhood he heard nothing but scorn of politics and men.

Memmius, a noble of his own age, played with him in the forest – played whatever games Lucretius commanded. Together they stood astonished before the gnarled faces of old trees or watched the leaves trembling in the sunlight light vibrant and virile, strewn like a veil with dust of gold. Often they gazed on the striped backs of wild pigs rooting in the soil, and sometimes in their walks they met a murmurous swarm of bees or a caravan of marching ants. Emerging one day from a dense underbrush they found themselves in a clearing set all around with ancient oaks so nicely placed that the circle of their tops formed a pool of clear blue sky above. The tranquillity of this spot was infinite. They were, it seemed, in a wide path leading straight to the divine depths of the heavens. Lucretius was touched by the calm benediction of the spaces.

With Memmius he left the serene forest temple to study eloquence at Rome. Presenting Lucretius with a Greek professor, the old gentleman who ruled the house on the mountain told him not to return until he had acquired the art of scorning human actions. Lucretius never saw the old gentleman again, for he died alone, cursing the tumult of society. When Lucretius came back to the empty house with its silent slaves and its bleak atrium, he brought an African woman, beautiful, barbarian, bad.

Memmius was gone to the house of his fathers. Lucretius had seen enough of factions and party warfare and corruption. He was in love.

He led an enchanted life at first. Dark against the rich wall hangings shone the glossy hair of his African, as she stretched her long body out on a low couch, holding up an amphora of sparkling wine in her arms, arms heavy with translucent emeralds. She had a strange little gesture of trailing one finger across her brow, and her smiles were from a source as lost and obscure as the streams of her Africa. Instead of spinning wool, her fingers patiently picked it into little wisps that went sailing through the air around her.

Lucretius was filled with desire of her splendid body. He fondled her metallic breasts and he kissed the purple lips of her. Sighs and love words passed, making them laugh as they grew exhausted. They touched the filmy, opaque veil that separates all lovers, and their desire leaped until it reached that acute point whence it poured through and through their flesh without quite plumbing the depths. Then the strange heart of the African recoiled, while Lucretius grew desperate because he could not accomplish the profundity of love. The woman turned cold, bleak and silent like the atrium and the silent slaves, and Lucretius went away into his library.

There he unwound a scroll whereon some writer had copied the doctrines of Epicure. Immediately he understood the infinity of earthly things and the futility of striving towards ideals. He compared the universe to those little wisps of wool the fingers of his African sent floating through. the air around her. Hives of bees, colonies of ants and the shifting pattern of the forest leaves became only groups of atoms to him. In his own body he felt the invisible struggle between discordant people anxious to separate. Glances passing from eye to eye he thought of now as rays of some more subtle matter. What was the likeness of his beautiful barbarian but a mosaic agreeably colored?

And the end of all this infinity he found sad and hopeless. Just as Roman factions warred with their armies and their criers, he saw turbulent masses of atoms disputing their obscure supremacy in the spilled blood of men. Death and dissolution, he saw, could only free these whirling masses to hurl them towards a thousand hopeless future struggles.

When Lucretius had been so instructed by the papyrus scroll with its Greek words interwoven one upon the other like worldly atoms, he left the bleak, lofty house of his ancestors and walked through the forest. He looked at the striped backs of the wild pigs forever nosing the earth. Emerging from a thick underbrush he came suddenly into that serene forest temple, then his eyes plunged up to the pool of blue sky and he rested.

From that point he regarded the swarming immensity of the universe: all the stones, all the plants, the trees, the animals and the men; with their colours, their passions, their instruments and the histories of these many things, their births, their desires, their deaths. In the exact centre of all that inevitable and necessary death he saw clearly the death of his beautiful African and he wept.

Tears, he knew, came from the action of certain small glands under the eyelids, agitated by a procession of atoms leaving the heart, while the heart itself had been struck by a series of coloured images detaching themselves from the surface of a woman’s body. He knew that love was caused by a flood of atoms desiring to join themselves to other atoms. The sadness of death he knew to be the unsoundest of all earthly delusions, for the dead feel neither sorrow nor suffering, while he who mourns, mourns but his own end. He knew, too, that we are left no shade or ghost to shed tears on those bodies of ours stretched out at our ghostly feet. Knowing as he did, the empty vanity of sorrow, love and death compared to those calm spaces in which we exist, he continued to weep and to desire love and fear death.

That is why he returned to the bleak house of his ancestors, seeking the beautiful African, whom he found brewing something in a caldron over a fire.

She, too, had been thinking, though her thoughts were as mysterious as the source of her smiles.

Lucretius looked down into the bubbling brew as it cleared slowly, like a green and stormy sky. The woman trailed one finger, gently over her forehead when she handed him the cup. Lucretius drank and his reason left him as quickly, so that he forgot all the Greek words from the papyrus scroll. Then, being mad, he learned real love for the first time, and in the night, being poisoned, he learned death.

CLODIA

Impure Woman

She was a daughter of Appius Claudius Pulcher, consul. When only a few years old she was distinguished among her brothers and sisters by the burning brightness of her large eyes. Tertia, her older sister, married early, and the youngest submitted herself entirely to Clodia’s caprices. Her brothers, Appius and Caius, were already greedy for leather frogs, nutshell chariots and other toys; later they grew avaricious for silver sesterces. Pretty and feminine, Clodius became the companion of his sisters, and Clodia persuaded him to don a long sleeved tunic, a little cap with golden strings, and a supple girdle. Then they tossed a flame-coloured veil over him, carrying him away to their own chamber, where he remained with all three. Clodia was his favourite, but he took also the innocence of Tertia and of the youngest girl.

When Clodia was eighteen her father died. Appius, her brother, then ruled the domain from their palace on Mount Palatin, while Caius prepared for public life. Delicate and beardless, Clodius remained with his sisters, who were both called Clodia. They took him secretly to the baths with them, buying the silence of the slave attendants for a few gold pieces. Clodius was treated like his sisters in their presence. Such were their pleasures before marriage. The youngest married Lucullus, who took her to Asia where he was fighting in the wars against Mithridates. For husband, Clodia chose her cousin Metellus, a dull, honest man. In those spendthrift times he preserved a spirit frugal and dour, and Clodia could not abide his simple rusticity. She was just beginning to dream of new things for her dear Clodius when Cæsar’s disapproval came to dampen their pleasure, for Clodia guessed he might compel them to separate. To evade this she made Pomponius Atticus bring Cicero to see her. Hers was a tittering, flirtatious circle. Around her were found such men as Licinius Calvus; young Curion (nicknamed “Girlie”); Sextius Clodius who followed the races; Ignatius and his band; and Catullus of Verona and Calius Rufus who were both in love with her. While they recounted the latest scandals about Cæsar and Mamurra, Clodia’s husband sat silent in his chair.

Elected proconsul, Metellus departed at once for Cisalpine Gaul, leaving Clodia in Rome with her sister-in-law, Murcia. Cicero was soon thoroughly charmed by Clodia’s big blazing eyes. He dreamed of divorcing Terrentia, his wife, supposing Clodia would leave her husband and come to him in that event. But Terrentia discovered the design, promptly terrifying Cicero with her discovery and its possible consequences until he dropped all association with Clodius and Clodia.

Meanwhile Clodius had busied himself making love to Pompeia, Cæsar’s wife. On the night celebrating the divinity of their patron goddess, women only were permitted in Cæsar’s house, for Cæsar was praetor and Pompeia alone offered the sacrifice. Disguised in the feminine garments of a zither player (just as his sister used to dress him) Clodius made his way to Pompeia, but a slave recognized him and Pompeia’s mother gave the alarm. The scandal was soon public. Clodius attempted to defend himself by vowing he had spent the night with Cicero, but Terrentia forced her husband’s denial and Cicero testified against Clodius.

Thereafter Clodius had no place among the nobles. Now past thirty, his sister was more ardent than ever. Clodius, she thought, might be adopted by some plebeian and so become a tribune of the people. Metellus, now returned to Rome, saw through her schemes and mocked her with them. In these days when she had no Clodius, she let herself be loved by Catullus. Metellus seemed odious to her.

Resolved to be rid of him, she met him one day as he returned from the senate, presenting him a cup to quench his thirst. Metellus drank and fell dead, and Clodia was free. Then she fled her husband’s house, shutting herself up at once with Clodius on Mount Palatin, where the youngest sister came to join them after deserting her husband, Lucullus. They resumed their old manner of life, all three, and unleashed their spite.

When he turned plebeian Clodius was known almost from the first as a tribune of the people, for notwithstanding his feminine graces, he had a strong, penetrating voice. He obtained Cicero’s exile, destroyed the statesman’s house before his eyes and swore ruin and death to all his friends.

Then serving as proconsul in Gaul, Cæsar was powerless to intervene. Through Pompey, Cicero gained new influences during the following year, thus contriving to have himself recalled, whereupon the fury of the young commoner leaped to extremes.

He first launched a violent attack against Cicero’s friend, Muon, who was then hinting at ambitions for the consulate. Apostle of night, Clodius tried to murder Muon after overpowering his torchbearers, but the scandal of that scene marked the end of the young plebeian’s popularity, for obscene songs about Clodius and Clodia were soon sung in the streets, while Cicero denounced them both in a violent discourse, comparing Clodia to Medea and Clymenestra. The rage of the brother and sister ended by consuming them. Clodius was killed in the dark by guardian slaves while attempting to burn Muon’s house.

Clodia was desperate. She took and rejected Catullus, Cælius Rufus and Ignatius, but she loved only her brother Clodius. It was for him she had poisoned her husband, for him she hired the incendiaries. When he died the object of her life vanished, though she remained beautiful and passionate. She had a country villa on the road to Ostia, a summer place with gardens on the Tiber, and another at Baja. In that last resort she sought refuge, endeavouring to find distraction through lascivious dancing with her women. But it was not enough. Her spirit was filled with the stupors of Clodius, whom she saw forever beardless and feminine. She recalled a time long ago when he had been captured by Sicilian pirates, and how they had used his soft body. She remembered a certain tavern where she had gone with him; how the doorway had been scribbled over with words written in charcoal, what a stench had come from the men who drank there, and how their chests were matted with hair.