Egypt -- History -- 30 B.C.-640 A.D. -- Fiction; German fiction -- Translations into English; Hadrian, Emperor of Rome, 76-138 -- Fiction
At their head, among other acquaintances, came Teuker, the gem-cutter,
the younger brother of Pollux. Crowned with ivy, and flourishing a
thyrsus he came dancing on, and behind him, leaping and shouting, a train
of men and women, all excited to the verge of folly, singing, hollooing,
and dancing.
Garlands of vine, ivy and asphodel fluttered from a hundred heads;
poplar, lotus, and laurel wreaths overhung their heated brows; panther-
skins, deer and goatskins hung from their bare shoulders and waved in the
wind as their bearers hurried onwards. This procession had been first
formed by some artists and rich youths returning with some women from a
banquet, with a band of music; every one who met this festal party had
joined it or had been forced to enlist with it. Respectable citizens and
their wives, laborers, maid-servants, slaves, soldiers and sailors,
officers, women flute-players, artisans, ship-captains, the whole chorus
of a theatre invited by a friend of art, excited women who dragged with
them a goat that was to be slaughtered to Dionysus--none had been able to
resist the temptation to join the procession. It turned down the Moon-
street, keeping to the middle of the road which was planted with elms,
and had on each side of it a raised foot-way, which at this time of night
no one used. How clear was the sound of the double-pipes, how bravely
the girls hit the calf-skin of the tambourines with their soft fists, how
saucily the wind tossed and tangled the dishevelled hair of the riotous
women and played with the smoke of the torches which were wielded in the
air by audacious youths, disguised as Pan or as Satyrs, and shouting as
they went.
Here a girl, holding her tambourine high in the air, rattled the little
bells on its hoop, as she flew along, as violently as though she wanted
to shake the hollow metal balls out of their frame, and send them
whistling through the air on their own account-there, side by side with
his comrades, who were excited almost to madness, a handsome lad came
skipping along in elaborately graceful leaps, but carrying over his arm,
with comic care, a long bull's-tail that he had tied on, and blowing
alternately up and down the short scale from the shortest to the longest
of the reeds composing his panpipes. Through the noisy crowd as they
rushed by, sounded, now and again, a loud roar, that might as easily have
been caused by pain as joy; but it was each time hastily drowned in mad
laughter, extravagant singing and jubilant music.
Old and young, great and small, all in short that came near this rabble
train, were carried off with irresistible force to follow it with shouts
of triumph. Even Pollux and Arsinoe had for some time ceased to walk
soberly side by side, but moved their feet, laughingly in time to the
merry measure.
"How nice it sounds," cried the artist. "I could dance and be merry too
Arsinoe, dance and make merry with you like a madman!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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