Dawn with rosy arm uplifted (as the poets say) had just begun to urge her gleaming steeds through the morning sky, when I woke from a tranquil sleep: and it was as though night had handed me over to the custody of day, for I suddenly remembered the acts of violence I had committed while it was still dark, and my mind was in a ferment. I sat hunched up in bed with my feet crossed and my fingers nervously clasping and unclasping themselves as I hugged my knees. Presently I wept, picturing to myself the scene in court, my trial and condemnation, my executioner, my execution. 'How can I hope to find a judge,' I asked myself, 'so mild and understanding as to find me not guilty of deliberately murdering those three unarmed men? I suppose that this was what Diophanes the Chaldaean had in mind when he confidently predicted that my journey was to make me famous!'
I was still brooding on my unlucky adventure and its probable consequences when I heard a violent knocking and shouting at the gate. As soon as it was opened, in rushed a great mass of people, headed by the magistrates and town constables, and occupied every room in the house. Two constables were ordered to arrest me and, though I offered no resistance, I was dragged violently off. When we reached the end of the lane I was astonished to see an enormous crowd waiting for my appearance: the entire population of Hypata seemed to be present. But as I walked miserably along the high road, staring at the ground through which I feared that my spirit must soon descend to the gloomy world below, one thing astonished me still more. For as I glanced up for a moment at the roaring crowd lining the roadside, I could not see a single person among all those many thousands who was not bursting with laughter.
Instead of marching me straight to the Market, where the trial was to take place, they took me along a circuitous processional route, turning corner after corner. It was as though I were the sacrificial victim which is led through all the principal streets of a town when unlucky portents have been observed and a sin-offering is needed to placate the local deities. Eventually I was put into the dock, and the magistrates took their seats on the bench. But when the Clerk of the Court bawled for silence, protests were heard from every side. 'For Heaven's sake stop the proceedings!' 'We're being crushed to death!' 'Try him in the theatre instead!' 'Stop! Stop!' 'Try him in the theatre!'
Since the trial was of such unusual interest the magistrates agreed on a change of venue; and the crowd emptied itself into the theatre with remarkable speed. Every single seat was occupied, every entrance blocked; even the roof was alive with people. Some balanced on the pediments of columns, some clung to statues, some squeezed themselves in at the windows or straddled the rafters; nobody seemed to pay the least attention to his own safety in the general desire to witness my trial. The constables led me across the stage and placed me right in front, close to the orchestra, as if the sin-offering were now being exhibited for public scrutiny.
The Clerk of the Court began bawling again, this time summoning the chief witness for the prosecution to appear. Up stepped an old man, whom I did not know. He was invited to speak for as long as there was water in the clock; this was a hollow globe into which water was poured through a funnel in the neck, and from which it gradually escaped through fine perforations at the base.
He spoke as follows:
'It is my duty today, your Honours, to give evidence on a matter which I regard as of no small importance, because it affects the peace of the whole town; and I trust that your Honours' sentence will be an exemplary one-that your sense of civic dignity will not allow you to condone this bloody multiple murder of your fellow-citizens committed by the villain in the dock. Your Honours must not suspect that I am motivated by any private grudge or feud in bringing this accusation. The fact is that I am the Captain of the Town Watch, and I doubt whether there is a man alive who can charge me with any irregularity in the performance of my duties. So let me report in detail exactly what happened last night. About midnight when I was completing my rounds, having visited every street and made sure that all was correct and in order, my attention was directed to this young man who was running amuck with his sword in a lane just outside the town walls. As I came up with my patrol, three men had just fallen dying at his feet, with blood spouting from their wounds. The murderer at once ran off, apparently well aware of the enormity of his crime, and though it was dark we saw him slip into a house close by, where he lay low all night. We kept the gate under observation, and by the mercy of the gods, who never allow crimes of this sort to go unpunished, we were able to pick him up early this morning before he had managed to escape by a back passage. Now I have fetched him here before your Honours for the sentence that he so richly deserves. He is a murderer in the first degree, caught red-handed, and though he is not a native of Thessaly, I trust that the sentence will be as severe as if his name appeared on the Town register.'
He had hardly finished before the Clerk of the Court jumped up and ordered me to begin my defence at once if I had one to make. At first I could do nothing but weep, not so much because of the ruthlessness of the accusation, as because of my own guilty conscience; but at last I was somehow inspired with enough boldness to plead.
'Your Honours,' I said, 'however truthful an account I give you of the circumstances in which these three fellow-citizens of yours-whose corpses are produced in evidence against me-met their deaths at my hands, I know only too well how difficult it will be to persuade you and the great assembly confronting me that I am innocent of wilful murder.
'However, if you are kind enough to grant me a brief hearing, I undertake to prove that I now stand on trial for my life not because of any criminal propensities in me, but as the accidental result of having given way to righteous anger. This is what happened. I returned from a supper party last night somewhat later than usual, and rather the worse for drink-I admit that-and just as I reached the house of your worthy fellow-citizen Milo, whose guest I am, I saw a gang of ruffians trying to break their way in by wrenching the gate off its hinges. They had already smashed the bars and were now openly threatening to murder every soul in the house. Their leader, a huge fellow who was doing most of the work, shouted out: "Come on, lads, show what stuff you're made of! Once inside, we'll kill every man Jack of them. There's no holding back now. Anyone who resists must be knocked on the head; anyone who stays in bed must be put to sleep for ever. Dead men tell no tales." At that, your Honours, I admit I drew my sword, which I carry as a protection against dangers of this very sort. I thought it my duty to frighten off these bloodthirsty scoundrels by a show of force. However, instead of running away when they saw that I was armed, they audaciously stood their ground and prepared to fight it out. Their captain, if I may call him so, rushed straight at me, grasped my hair with both hands and began forcing my head back. He shouted out: "Quick, a stone! Bash his skull in!" But luckily, before he got what he wanted, I was able to drive my sword sideways into his body and he fell dead at my feet. Another tackled me by the ankles and tried to bite my feet, but I ran him through with a well-aimed thrust under the shoulder blade; then, rapidly disengaging my sword, I received the third one on the point as he rushed at me with his guard down.
'The fight was over, and I began congratulating myself on having preserved the lives of my host and hostess and safe-guarded the peace of the town. In fact, I expected not merely to be pardoned for what I had done, but to be given some public reward for my services. Now I am amazed and mystified at this charge of wilful murder. After all, I am a man of high standing in my own country, where I have never been accused of the smallest crime, and value my reputation above all the treasures of this world; nobody in this entire theatre can prove that before last night I had the slightest quarrel with those wicked wretches, or that I was even acquainted with any of them. If I am charged with highway robbery, let the prosecution show you one single article which I am alleged to have taken from their dead bodies. I plead guilty to justifiable homicide alone.'
I burst into tears again and stretching out my hands in a gesture of supplication, appealed to the humanity of the audience. I begged them by all that they held most dear to show me mercy. When I thought that my tears and undeniable misery must have created a favourable impression, I called upon the all-seeing eyes of Justice and the Sun himself to declare my innocence before a full Council of the blessed gods. At last I dared raise my head a little. To my consternation the whole audience was tittering with suppressed merriment-the whole audience, except Milo, my kind host, my friend, my protector who, seated well in front, was unashamedly gasping and crying for laughter.
I thought: 'Merciful Heavens, has he no heart? Has he no conscience? I save his house from robbery, I save him and his family from assassination, yet when I stand here in the dock on a capital charge, he won't raise a finger to save me. He justs sits and cackles with brutal laughter at the prospect of my death!'
Meanwhile a young woman in deep mourning, with a baby at her breast, came hurrying down the central aisle, followed by an old hag dressed in filthy rags. Both were lamenting at the top of their voices, and waving olive branches to show that they were suppliants. They climbed up on the stage, and bending over the bench on which the three corpses lay covered with a sheet, beat their breasts and howled dismally. The hag screeched: 'Your Honours, I appeal to you in the name of pity, I appeal to you in the name of conscience! These fine young men had a mother, a poor widow. She demands vengeance for their brutal murder and will take no denial.' And the younger woman shrieked: 'The eldest of them was my husband and now I too am a poor, destitute widow. But whatever happens to me, your Honours, I beg you at least to remember my little child, who has been orphaned so young. I beg you to blot out with the murderer's blood the terrible crime that has been committed in our law-abiding town of Hypata.'
The senior magistrate rose and addressed the people: 'Since no one, not even the defendant Lucius, can deny that this is a crime calling for the severest punishment, it only remains for us to perform the secondary duty of finding out who were his accomplices in this foul deed. It seems most unlikely that he could have murdered three such powerfully built men as these single-handed. But the slave who escorted the prisoner home from the supper party has mysteriously disappeared and left him as the only material witness of the crime, so we shall have to extract the truth from him by torture. It is imperative that we force him to reveal the names of his gang, if only to set our minds at ease. They may be planning further acts of violence.'
The instruments of torture regularly used in Greece were produced at once: the charcoal brazier for scorching the soles of my feet; the wheel for racking my joints; not to mention a cat-o'-nine-tails and the flogging bench. It doubled my misery to realize that I would not be allowed to die at least unmutilated. But while I was waiting for the torture to begin, the old hag who had spoiled everything by her howling appealed to the magistrates: 'Before you crucify this bandit who has murdered my poor darlings, will your Honours please allow their corpses to be uncovered so that everyone here may see how young and beautiful they were? That will make you all angrier than ever; you will insist on a revenge as cruel as the crime itself.'
Great applause. The magistrates immediately ordered me to go over to the bench and uncover the corpses myself. I refused to do anything of the sort, and struggled against the constables who tried to force me to obedience. The order to relive my crime in public by a display of the victims, I found a terrible one to obey. But they managed to wrench my hand from my side and stretch it over the bodies. There was no help for it: I had to yield, whatever the consequences might be. With fearful reluctance, I grasped the hem of the shroud and drew it back.
But good God! what was this? this most extraordinary sight, this sudden complete change of the whole situation? A moment before I was reckoning myself already a slave of Queen Proserpine's, detailed for duty in the infernal halls of her royal husband; but now, nothing of the kind! I stood goggling dumbly like an idiot, and even today I find it difficult to convey adequately the stupefying effect that the sight produced on me. The three corpses were nothing more than three inflated wine-skins, punctured in several places! And so far as I could recall the details of my fight with the house-breakers, the holes corresponded exactly with my sword-thrusts.
Then the laughter, which had until now been slyly repressed by the stage-managers of the hoax, burst out uproariously from the whole vast theatre. Part of the audience cheered me exuberantly as a jolly good fellow, but many could do no more than press their hands to their stomachs to relieve the ache. The proceedings ended abruptly and as the great crowd poured out of the theatre, drowned in floods of mirth, every face was turned back for a last hilarious look at me.
From the moment that I pulled back the shroud, I had been standing there as stiff and cold as stone, exactly as if I had been one of the marble columns that supported the roof; and my soul had not yet floated back from the shadows of death, when my host Milo came up and with gentle insistence drew me away with him. Then my tears burst out once more, and I could not restrain my convulsive sobbing; however, he took me home by side-streets and narrow passages to spare me the embarrassment of being recognized. He tried to calm me by cheerful attempts at consolation, but I was now burning with such indignation at having been victimized in this insulting way that he could do nothing with me.
Presently the magistrates arrived at our house in their robes of office and did their utmost to appease me. 'Lord Lucius,' they said, 'we are well aware of your rank and high position, for your mother's family is, of course, famous throughout Greece; so you must not think that it was in wanton insult that we subjected you to the proceedings which you have taken so much to heart. We beg you to forget your momentary anguish. The fact is that today we annually hold a solemn festival in honour of Laughter, the best of all gods, which must always be celebrated with some new practical joke. Laughter will now lovingly accompany you wherever you go and never allow you to be glum, daubing your forehead with the cheerful colours that mark you as his own. Moreover, the town of Hypata has unanimously conferred on you the highest dignity that it can bestow: you are now inscribed on the roll of its most distinguished benefactors and your bronze statue will in due course be unveiled in the market place.'
I replied politely: 'Convey to the citizens of this splendid and unique town how deeply sensible I am of the honour that has been done me; but please forgive me for suggesting that they should reserve their public statuary for older and more worthy persons than myself.' I forced a smile as I took courteous leave of them, and did what I could to give them the impression that I was now perfectly happy.
As soon as they had gone a servant ran in. 'The Lady Byrrhaena's compliments, and will my lord kindly remember her invitation to supper, which he was good enough to accept last night; the guests will be arriving very shortly.'
Shuddering at the very mention of her house, I answered: 'Please assure her ladyship that I would come most willingly, but for an unavoidable engagement. My host Milo has charged me, in the name of the God who presides over today's festivities, to dine with him tonight, and insists that he will neither allow me to leave the house nor come out with me himself. I regret that I must postpone the pleasure to another more suitable evening.'
Milo then took me along to the nearest baths, ordering a slave to follow us with the toilet materials; and it was true that Laughter accompanied me wherever I went I shrank from the humorous greetings of everyone we met, huddling as close as I could to Milo, appalled with shame at having been made to look such a fool. How I managed to wash, anoint and wipe myself clean at the baths, and how I ever got home again, I really cannot remember; I was so mortified and confused at being stared at, nudged at and pointed at by the whole town.
I swallowed a wretched little meal at Milo's and then told him that so much weeping had given me a severe headache and that I must go to bed at once. Milo readily excused me. So I went along to my room and flung myself on the bed, where I brooded painfully on the events of the day.
Presently my dear, dear Fotis, having got her mistress safely to bed, came stealing in. She was not at all her usual gay, lively self, but frowning and anxious. After a long silence she faltered: 'I have something to confess, Lucius: I am wholly to blame for all your misfortunes of today.' Then she pulled a sort of stockwhip from under her apron and handed it to me. 'Here, take this. Revenge yourself with it on the girl who has betrayed you; yes, flog me as hard as you like and wherever you like. Only don't think for a moment that I purposely caused you so much misery. I call all the gods to witness that I would willingly shed my own blood rather than let you suffer the slightest harm on my account, or feel the least trouble hanging over your head. But bad luck always dogs me; so something that I was ordered to do for quite another reason had the effect of hurting you horribly.'
My curiosity had not been damped by my cruel experiences and I was longing to get to the bottom of the mysterious incident of the wine-skins. I cried indignantly: 'You bring me this wicked, horrible thing and invite me to beat you with it? Before it ever touches your creamy skin, I'll chop and tear it into little bits. But, darling, tell me faithfully, please tell me, just what it was you did that has made me so miserable. I swear to you, I swear by your face which I love so much, that nobody, not even yourself, could make me believe that you ever hurt me deliberately; and it is a principle of justice that no innocent intention must ever be viewed as criminal because it accidentally happens to result in bad luck.'
Her half-closed eyes were moist and tremulous and languid with desire. I began to drink love from them with thirsty kisses; which revived her spirits a little. She said: 'First, I must carefully shut the door in case anyone overhears what I am going to tell you-something very private-and we both get into frightful trouble.' She locked and bolted the door, then came back to the bed and holding my head close to hers, with her hands locked behind it, said in a soft whisper: 'I should be absolutely terrified to let you into the secrets of this house if I didn't have complete trust in your discretion. You come of a noble family, and you have a noble soul, and you are already initiated into various religious mysteries. So I know that you will never reveal to a soul what I am now going to tell you; my deep love for you forces it out of me, and you will be the only person in the world whom I have taken into my confidence. It may seem a trivial story, but you must repay me by keeping it forever tightly locked in the darkest corner of your mind; because it concerns my mistress Pamphil? and the magic arts by which she exacts obedience from ghosts, puts pressure on the stars, blackmails the gods and keeps all the five elements well under her thumb.
'She works at these arts with the most frantic fervour whenever she falls in love with a good-looking young man; which is pretty often. At present she's desperately in love with a young Boeotian who really is wonderfully handsome, and is using all her best sorceries to seduce him. Yesterday evening I heard her threatening the Sun that if he didn't hurry up and set, to give her more time for her spells, she'd throw a cloud of darkness around him and consign the earth to perpetual night. That was after she had seen the Boeotian having a hair-trim at the barber's and privately ordered me to go into the shop and pick up some of the hair lying about on the floor. Though I took care to attract as little attention as possible, the barber knew that our house has a bad reputation for black magic, so he grabbed me and shouted: "Now really, this is going too far, you little witch. When are you going to stop stealing the hair of my good-looking customers? Unless you end this nonsense pretty soon, I warn you that I'll march you straight off to Court!" Then he rudely felt between my breasts and pulled out the ends of hair already hidden there; he was in a towering rage. I felt very badly about it because I know my mistress only too well: whenever she gets crossed like this she flies into a vile temper and gives me a savage beating. I wondered: "Shall I run away?" But as soon as I thought of you, I decided to do nothing of the sort. As I walked gloomily home I saw a man with a pair of shears trimming the hair off some goat-skins. They were hanging in front of his shop, tightly tied at the necks and well blown up, and it happened that the colour of their hair was yellowish and of exactly the same shade as the Boeotian's. I picked up several strands and brought them back to my mistress, without telling her whose hair it really was.
'When it grew dark, she climbed in a great state of excitement up to the cock-loft at the top of the house, which she finds a convenient place for practising her art in secret; it's open to all the four winds, with a particularly wide view of the eastern sky. She had everything ready there for her deadly rites: all sorts of aromatic incense, metal plaques engraved with secret signs, beaks and claws of ill-omened birds, various bits of corpse-flesh-in one place she had arranged the noses and fingers of crucified men, in another the nails that had been driven through their palms and ankles, with bits of flesh still sticking to them-also little bladders of life-blood saved from the men she had murdered and the skulls of criminals who had been thrown to the wild beasts in the amphitheatre. She began to repeat certain charms over the still warm and quivering entrails of some animal or other, dipping them in turn into jars of spring-water, cow's milk, mountain honey and mead. Then she plaited the hair I had given her, tied it into peculiar knots and threw it with a great deal of incense on her charcoal fire. The power of this charm is irresistible-backed, you must understand, by the blind violence of the gods who have been invoked: the smell of the hair smoking and crackling on the fire compels its owner to come to the place from which he is being summoned. So you see, instead of the Boeotian, the goat-skins came rapping for admittance at our gate, magically endowed with human breath and senses and understanding. Then unluckily you arrived too, pretty drunk, and in the pitch darkness mistook them for burglars. You drew your sword courageously, like Ajax when he went mad and mistook the flock of sheep for his enemies; but yours was a far nobler deed because you never shed a drop even of sheep's blood. So now, darling, here you are, safely back in my arms, after your attack of homicidal-I mean wineskinicidal-mania.'
I joked back: 'Yes, I'm a regular Hercules. This first labour of mine compares well with his slaying of the three-bodied King Geryon, or his capture of the three-headed dog Cerberus. But if you want me to forgive you wholeheartedly for causing me so much anguish, I insist on your doing one thing for me. It is this: I want to be secretly present when next your mistress invokes the infernal gods, and especially when she makes use of her supernatural powers to change herself into some animal. I'm determined to know everything possible about the science of magic. And, by the way, you seem to be pretty well grounded in it. Of one thing I'm quite certain: that though I have always shied away from love affairs even with ladies of the highest rank, I'm now a complete slave to your sparkling eyes, your rosy cheeks, your shining hair, your fragrant breasts and those kisses you give me with your parted lips. It is a willing slavery too. I have no notion of leaving you and no regret that I'm so far from home, and I'd give the whole world not to forfeit the joy in store for me tonight.'
'I should love to do as you ask, darling Lucius,' she said, 'but Pamphil? is a surly old beast and when she starts working on spells of this sort it's always in a lonely spot where she can be certain of not being disturbed. All the same, I would risk anything to please you, so I'll keep a careful watch on her movements and let you know when she gets busy again. But remember what I told you: you must promise to keep the most faithful silence about all this.'
Before we had quite finished discussing my plan, a sudden wave of longing swept over us both. We pulled off our clothes and rushed naked together in Bacchic fury; and when I was nearly worn out by the natural consummation of my desire she tempted me to make love to her as though she were a boy; so that when, after long hours of wakefulness, we finally dropped off to sleep, it was broad daylight before we felt like getting up again.