The Death of the Gods: (Christ and Antichrist, 1 of 3) — John Shaqi
The Death of the Gods: (Christ and Antichrist, 1 of 3)Merezhkovsky, Dmitry Sergeyevich
History
The Death of the Gods: (Christ and Antichrist, 1 of 3)
Merezhkovsky, Dmitry Sergeyevich
Biographical fiction; Julian, Emperor of Rome, 331-363 -- Fiction; Rome -- History -- Julian, 361-363 -- Fiction
When Julian awoke it was night. Over the roofless quadrilateral stars
were shining, and the crescent moon shedding her silver upon the head
of the statue. Julian arose. Olympiodorus must have meanwhile been
tending the temple, although he had either not observed or had
refrained from waking the child; for now, on the bronze tripod, fresh
charcoal was glowing, and a fillet of odorous smoke arising towards
the goddess.
Julian smiling approached, and from the chrysolite cup, between the
feet of the tripod, took a few grains of incense and flung them on the
coals. Smoke rose more thickly, and the ruddy glow of the fire, like a
pale flush of life, came over the face of the statue, contending with
the soft new-born shine of the moon.
Julian bowed down and kissed the marble feet, and watered them with
his tears, exclaiming--
"Aphrodite! Aphrodite! thou shalt be my everlasting love!"
VI
In one of the foul and dirty quarters of the Syrian Seleucia, the port
for Antioch on the shores of the Inner Sea, narrow and tortuous alleys
debouched into a market-place lying along the quays. The sea-horizon
was invisible, so thick was the throng of masts and the tangle of
rigging. The houses were a mass of miserable little shells,
whitewashed within and encumbered with furniture. Their fronts were
garnished with tattered carpets, dirty fragments of cloth, and
ravelled matting. In every nook and hovel and crowded court, along
kennels and gutters of dirty fever-stricken water from laundries and
baths of the poor, there lay seething in its penury and hunger a
populace strangely cosmopolitan.
The sun, after thoroughly baking the earth, had just descended below
the horizon; wide-winged twilight was settling slowly down; a stifling
heat of dust and fog still weighed on the spirits of the city. From
the market square breathed a suffocating atmosphere of flesh and
vegetables, becoming rotten through lying all day in the blaze of the
sun. Half-naked slaves were carrying bales of merchandise from the
ships. Their heads were close-shaven; through their rags could be seen
horrible blotches on the skin; and the greater number bore on their
faces, in brandings by red-hot iron, the Latin letters C. F., that is
to say _Cave Furem_ ('ware thief!).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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