SAECULUM AUREUM
The summer following my meeting with Osroës was passed in Asia Minor: I made a stop in Bithynia in order to supervise in person the annual felling in the State forests there. At Nicomedia, that lustrous, well-ordered, and learned city, I stayed with the procurator of the province, Cneius Pompeius Proculus, who lived in the ancient palace of King Nicomedus, where voluptuous memories of the young Julius Caesar abound. Breezes from the Propontis fanned those cool, shaded rooms. Proculus was a man of taste; he arranged some readings for my pleasure. Some visiting sophists and several small groups of students and poetry-lovers met together in the gardens, beside a spring consecrated to Pan. From time to time a servant would dip a great jar of porous clay into the cooling waters; even the most limpid verses lacked the sparkle of that clear stream.
One late afternoon we were reading an abstruse work of Lycophron, whom I enjoy for his daring juxtaposition of sounds, figures and allusions, a complex system of echoes and mirrors. A little apart from the others a young boy was listening to those difficult strophes, half attentive, half in dream; I thought at once of some shepherd, deep in the woods, vaguely aware of a strange bird’s cry. He had brought neither tablet nor style. Seated on the edge of the water’s basin he trailed a hand idly over the fair, placid surface. His father, I learned, had held a small post in administration of the vast imperial domains; left young to a grandfather’s care the boy had been sent to study in Nicomedia, and to reside there with a former guest of his parents, a shipowner and builder of the town who seemed rich to that modest family.
I kept him on after the others had gone. He had read little, and knew almost nothing of the world; though childishly trusting, he was also disposed to reflection. I had seen Claudiopolis, his native city, so I led him to speak of his home on the edge of the great pine forests which furnish masts for our ships; of the hilltop temple of Attys, whose strident music he loved; of the superb horses of his country and its strange gods. His voice was low, and his Greek had the accent of Asia. Suddenly aware of my attention, or of my gaze, perhaps, he grew confused, flushed, and fell back into one of those stubborn silences to which I was soon to become accustomed. An intimacy gradually developed. He accompanied me thereafter in all my voyages, and the fabulous years began.
Antinous was Greek; I traced the story of this ancient but little known family back to the time of the first Arcadian settlers along the shores of the Propontis. But Asia had produced its effect upon that rude blood, like the drop of honey which clouds and perfumes a pure wine. I could detect in him mystic superstitions like those of a disciple of Apollonius, and the religious adoration, as well, of an Oriental subject for his monarch. His presence was extraordinarily silent: he followed me like some animal, or a familiar spirit. He had the infinite capacity of a young dog for play and for swift repose, and the same fierceness and trust. This graceful hound, avid both for caresses and commands, took his post at my feet.
I admired his almost haughty indifference for all that was not his delight or his cult; it served him in place of disinterestedness and scruple, and of all virtues painfully acquired. I marveled at his gentleness, which had aspects of hardness, too, and the somber devotion to which he gave his whole being. And yet this submission was not blind; those lids so often lowered in acquiescence or in dream were not always so; the most attentive eyes in the world would sometimes look me straight in the face, and I felt myself judged. But I was judged as is a god by his adorer: my harshness and sudden suspicions (for I had them later on) were patiently and gravely accepted. I have been absolute master but once in my life, and over but one being.
If I have said nothing yet of a beauty so apparent it is not merely because of the reticence of a man too completely conquered. But the faces which we try so desperately to recall escape us: it is only for a moment … I see a head bending under its dark mass of hair, eyes which seemed slanting, so long were the lids, a young face broadly formed, as if for repose. This tender body varied all the time, like a plant, and some of its alterations were those of growth. The boy changed; he grew tall. A week of indolence sufficed to soften him completely; a single afternoon at the hunt made the young athlete firm again, and fleet; an hour’s sun would turn him from jasmine to the color of honey. The boyish limbs lengthened out; the face lost its delicate childish round and hollowed slightly under the high cheekbones; the full chest of the young runner took on the smooth, gleaming curves of a Bacchante’s breast; the brooding lips bespoke a bitter ardor, a sad satiety. In truth this visage changed as if I had molded it night and day.
When I think back on these years I seem to return to the Age of Gold. Trouble was no more: past efforts were repaid by an ease which was almost divine. Travel was play, a pleasure well known, controlled, and skilfully planned. Work, though incessant, was only a form of delight. My life, where everything came late, power and happiness, too, now acquired the splendor of high noon, the luminous glow of siesta time when everything, the objects of the room and the figure lying beside one, bathes in golden shade. Passion satisfied has its innocence, almost as fragile as any other: the remainder of human beauty was relegated to the rank of mere spectacle, and ceased to be game for my pursuit. This adventure, begun casually enough, served to enrich but also to simplify my life: the future was matter for slight concern; I ceased to question the oracles; the stars were no longer anything more than admirable patterns upon the vault of heaven. Never before had I noted with such elation the glimmer of dawn on the distant islands, the coolness of caves sacred to nymphs and haunted by birds of passage, the low flight of quail at dusk. I reread the poets; some seemed better to me than before, but most of them worse. I wrote verses myself which appeared less inadequate than usual.
There was Bithynia and its sea of trees, the forests of cork-oak and pine; and the hunting lodge with latticed galleries where the boy, once again in familiar haunts, would cast off his dagger and belt of gold, scattering his arrows at random to roll with the dogs on the leather divans. The plains had stored up the long summer’s heat; haze rose from the meadows along the Sangarius where herds of wild horses ran. At break of day we used to go down to the river to bathe, brushing tall grass in our path still wet with dew, while above us hung the thin crescent moon which Bithynia takes for her emblem. This country received every privilege and even added my name to its own.
Winter overtook us at Sinope; there, in almost Scythian cold, I officially inaugurated the work of enlarging the port, already begun at my order by the navy’s men. On our way to Byzantium, outside each village the local officials had enormous fires built up for my guards to warm themselves. We crossed the Bosphorus in full beauty of storm and snow. Then came long rides in the Thracian Forest, with stinging wind swelling the folds of our cloaks. I remember the steady beat of rain on the leaves and the tent top; the halt at the workers’ camp where Hadrianopolis was to be built, and ovations there from the veterans of the Dacian wars; the soft, wet earth out of which walls and towers soon would rise. In spring an inspection of the Danube garrisons took me back to Sarmizegethusa, which today is no more than a prosperous village; a bracelet of King Decebalus now graced the wrist of the young Bithynian.