Saronia Part 1

Saronia.

by Richard Short.

CHAPTER I

THE AGORA

The sun had risen in all its splendour, and was flooding the bay and mountains with silvery light. The river Cayster moved on its course, and mixed its waters with the blue of the aegean Sea, and washed the sh.o.r.es of Samos, appearing like a purple vision on the ocean. Boats and s.h.i.+ps of quaint form and gorgeous colouring, propelled by a gentle breeze, moved to and fro, and glided up the s.h.i.+ning way which led to the great city of Ephesus, the chief of Ionia, and the home of the G.o.ddess. Not far away was s.h.i.+ning like a brilliant star the marble pillars of the Temple of Diana. Ephesus was now fully awake, and the people were moving along its streets, some wending their way to the temples to offer their morning devotions, others hastening to the great theatre, and many more directing their course towards their daily toil; for men must work, even within the precincts of a city where all is splendour. The city, with its wealth of art and stores of gold, was envied of conquerors. Situated between the mountains, its inhabitants had a n.o.ble chance of making it beautiful, and, being skilled in art and endowed with learning, they built temples of the n.o.blest design, erected statues of the richest order, painted pictures of the grandest conception. Odeum and theatre all sprang forth in magical beauty and power, whilst villas replete with elegance combined to make it one of the loveliest cities, surrounded with hills and groves and the traditions of a line of centuries.

The great market was being filled with men and women offering the most tempting products of the land. Groups were selling and buying fruits, flowers and perfumes, bread, fish and wine. Ribbon-sellers, chaplet-weavers, money-changers--all were there; and the people purchased for their daily needs, whilst others bought rich offerings for the temples of their G.o.ddess and their G.o.ds.

Here and there the ground was covered with flowers of richest shades and sweetest fragrance, and great branches with cl.u.s.tering blossoms of crimson oleander and myrtle lay around.

From the house of the Roman Lady Venusta the slave Saronia had come to buy. She was clothed in the simplest manner, tall and beautifully formed, with eyes speaking a tale of sadness and a weariness of life; a dignified slave, but a slave nevertheless, purchased but a year ago, and brought hither by a trading-barque from Sidon, in Phoenicia, where she had served as a slave from childhood.

She gathered together her pomegranates, citrons, almonds, olives, and flowers, placed them in her basket of wickerwork, walked out of the market, and pa.s.sed up the way which led to the home of her mistress. But the splendour to which she hastened was a prison to her. She so full of young life, she who felt within her the rising for supremacy (an unquenchable spirit), she with a mystic flame burning up her soul, felt it was not a home but a waiting-place until the Fates pa.s.sed by and led her on.

True, Venusta treated Saronia fairly well, but Nika, her daughter, hated her--from the first she hated her. And why this hate? Nika herself could scarcely say; but who has not felt this subtle power to love or hate at first sight--an intuitive something which draws or repels without our reason or consent? Perhaps it was the great sadness of Saronia's eyes, the overflowing influence of a mighty spirit, that Nika disliked so much; or perhaps it was that when Chios, the Greek, came to visit the Romans, he spoke kindly to the slave, and thus Nika detested her. It may be so.

Pa.s.sing by the great theatre and the Odeum, she went up the shaded way over the side of Mount Coressus, and came to the beautiful home of Venusta, pa.s.sed in laden with fruit and flowers, great cl.u.s.ters of sweet-scented blossoms falling from the basket as she raised it from her head. For a moment she stood as in a dream, with girdled drapery falling to her feet, and her gaze firmly fixed upon the great temple appearing full in view as she looked through the window, which allowed the sunlight to penetrate into her room.

That night, when her work was done, she mounted the marble steps surrounding the house, and breathed the pleasant, perfumed air which came down the mountain-side and danced through the myrtle groves.

The moon had well-nigh reached her meridian and sent forth her pale, cool light, bathing the city in its glory, making the great hills look so strange and lonely, as star after star struggled to show their quivering rays; but the light of the Queen of Heaven, the great Moon G.o.ddess, absorbed them all.

'Twas then the spirit of the girl was moved, and she said to herself:

'Ah! what am I, most Holy Mother, most chaste Luna, great Orb which symbols forth all Nature's mother, thou great Ashtoreth whom I was taught to adore in childhood when in Sidon? Well do I remember when I raised my tiny hand and kissed it unto thee. And they tell me here, also, thou art the same mother, but under another name; that in Ionia they call thee Diana instead of Ashtoreth, and that yonder mighty temple is thy dwelling-place, around whose sacred pillars spreads a sanctuary where those who flee are safe. Holy Mother! May I flee to thee? They say even a slave may come to thy sanctuary, and once there with a just cause, is ever safe from the fiercest Roman or the rudest Greek.'

And thus she spoke until a flock of night-birds flew along and like a cloud obscured the moon, and a voice, sounding like a silver lute, seemed to say:

'My face is veiled with earth-born things; those birds are dark to thee, but every wing before my gaze is tipped with light and silver sheened.

So shalt thou see thy sorrows when thou fully knowest me.'

CHAPTER II

THE MESSENGER OF EROS

The great theatre at Ephesus was thronged; over fifty thousand people had gathered together to witness a new play. Amongst them were Nika and Chios.

'Dost thou like the play?' she asked. 'They tell me the tragedy was wrought in Phoenicia, and has been played with great success in Sidon, from thence to Cyprus, and now here. It pleases thee, Chios?'

'Yes, fairly so; and would do so more were it not that through it runs a vein of suffering, making one wish he could fit disjointed elements so properly together as to make the poor richer, the weak stronger, and the mighty less tyrannical.'

'Chios, again thou art a dreamer. Thou shouldst have a planet all thine own, and, after setting up thy kings governing each particular section of thine orb, thou then shouldst sit enthroned above them all and play the mighty demiG.o.d.'

'Nay, Nika, stay thy wit; thou makest sport of my poor sympathies.'

'Yes, yes; it is well, perchance, that thou shouldst bridle in my tongue. But, after all, thou art too kind; there are those of meaner dust who would build upon thy kindness until thou be but the hidden foundation for their super-structure of selfishness. Look, for instance, at that slave-girl of mine, Saronia the Sidonian, naturally haughty, arrogant--if I were to free her, she would spit at me. No, no, a place for everything. A serpent crawls the earth; let it crawl. Dost thou know, Chios, methinks that girl, with her deep unfathomable eyes of night-gloom, is not quite so innocent as one might imagine. I suspect her----'

'Of what?'

'Of what? Why, the old story. She has a lover, and meets him secretly--so speaks the rumour of our other household slaves. What thinkest thou?'

'Think? Think it is a base slander on a defenceless maid. She is as pure as the first dawn of day--a mighty spirit is she, as wild as the north wind and as untamable as the winged lightning, but as chaste as the snow on the mountains of Tmolus.'

'Thy words are so sweet for this scornful girl that surely the power of her magical love encircles thy heart and will eat out thy life. What next? Wilt thou offer Lucius, my father, a ransom and wed her?'

'Nay, Nika, what thou sayest is not so, may not be; nevertheless, am I not free to love anything the G.o.ds have created and blessed?'

'Yes, yes, go thy ways; but, for all that, it is more seemly for an eagle to mate with an eagle than with a screech-owl. Thou wilt see her anon; thy pet slave waiteth without for her mistress. Now go to her for me and bid her come; and, love-sick boy, be sure she does not fascinate thee that thou be so transfixed to her side that pa.s.sers-by think they see two statues by Scopas, dressed by some wanton wit to imitate the life.'

'Ah, Nika, thou wert always merry; would thou wert as tender-hearted as humorous. I obey thee.'

And leaving her, he pa.s.sed out, and saw Saronia--saw her leaning, tired and thoughtful, against a pillar, and around its base were richly carved in strong relief the stories of the G.o.ds. Stepping towards her, he said:

'Sleepest thou, or art thou thinking of thy far-away Sidon, or perchance peering into the future to divine thy fortune? What are the omens? Have fair ones pa.s.sed thee as thou standest here?'

'Nay, good sire, I was thinking of neither the past nor the future, but of the present. I know I am but a slave, a thing who has no right to speak or move or scarcely think without my mistress's bidding.'

'I pity thee, and have tried to befriend thee.'

'Thou art kind, but it will serve me little; they hate me--they all hate me, and make my life a misery--but it will not ever be thus. Just now a woman of peculiar mien stood before me--a woman skilled, she told me, in the mysteries of fate. Looking at me, she said my star was rising full of splendour, and would lead me by its power into a knowledge deep and high--deep as death, high as the heavens. Think you, master, there be any truth in such woman's talk?'

'I cannot say, Saronia. Of those hidden things I am not given to understand. I lean towards the new faith, whose founder is one Christ.

Of Him I know little, but 'tis said He is both G.o.d and man. What thinkest thou of this?'

'I know not what to think. I do not know the faith, neither does it seem to rise for a hearing in my soul. No; born within me is the faith of Ashtoreth, and as it seems akin to much that is wors.h.i.+pped here, I think I should feel more at home were I to understand the mysteries of Hecate and wors.h.i.+p at her shrine.'

'Thou dost not know what thou askest, Saronia. The way to those mysteries is dark and to thee impenetrable. Thou art too good to load thy spirit with such things of gloom, too young to sacrifice thee there.

Around her darkness hovers--night, everlasting night, abides. I have heard those who know say this. Are there no brighter hopes for thee? If not, slave art thou indeed--slave in body, slave in soul.'

'True,' said the girl. 'Slaves are we either in body or spirit, whomsoever we serve--men or women, G.o.ddesses or G.o.ds; to such must we submit and lose our will in that of the greater. Serve, then, the one thou likest best. For myself, I think I like Diana as Hecate. She, I am told, rules the underworld. I aspire no higher; my pinions were shorn away, and I now grovel on the earth, and wish to wors.h.i.+p in her bosom.'

'Of what mould art thou, Saronia? I understand thee not. I fear thee somewhat; my soul quails before the power thou already wieldest. What wouldst thou be with that great dark spirit of thine if thou only moved out upon the great ocean of the Ephesian faith? Verily thou wouldst be a bird of ill-omen to those thou didst hate. Didst thou ever love, Saronia?'

'What is love?' said she. 'I know it not. Is it a new G.o.d?'

'Yes, girl, call it a G.o.d if thou pleasest. Call it Eros, call it Venus, call it what thou mayest, thou wilt fall before it one day and wors.h.i.+p--wors.h.i.+p madly and perchance too well. Haste thee now to thy mistress, Nika; I have already kept thee too long.'

That night, when all were asleep, Saronia stood looking again towards the great Temple of Artemis. Dimly could she see it by the stars. Two great pa.s.sions were arranging themselves within her bosom--not two pa.s.sions joined in common sympathy, but each one striving for itself, and both against the great citadel of her heart. One she recognised, that which drew her on like some great master mind beseeching her to grasp the key and unlock the great secrets of Nature's G.o.ddess. The other she knew not; it was a strange pa.s.sion to her. It was wild, tumultuous, and then calm as a summer's eve--like a storm which bows down the lofty pines on Mount Coressus, and yet as gentle and melodious as the softest Ionian music which ever broke the stillness of the evening air. And as the maid stood there with her long tresses falling over her graceful form, visions rose before her, visions of the future stretching down the great highway leading into eternity, and a voice rang through her soul, crying, 'What is love?'

And she said within herself: 'Can this strange pa.s.sion be the messenger of Eros?' A form rose before her mind like unto Chios. The great clouds rolled up from the west, the lightnings flashed across the sky, illuminating for a moment the great white marble Temple with its roof of cedar and its plates of gold. The frightened, s.h.i.+vering girl drew her garments tightly around her and hid her face.