"Now?" I said, looking up at the full moon. "It must be near midnight!"
"Then things should just be getting lively," she said.
I was never one to hold out against temptation for long. "Lead on!" I said.
In Rome, it was easy for people to forget that some other cities have what is known as a night life. When Romans feel in a mood for debauchery, they begin their parties early so everyone can get properly paralytic before it gets too dark for their slaves to carry them home. In other places, they just light the torches and carry on.
The Daphne of Alexandria, named for the famous pleasure-garden of Antioch, was located in a beautiful grove in the Greek quarter, near the Paneum. Lines of torches led to its entrance, and between the torches vendors wandered, selling the wherewithal necessary for an evening of revelry. To my surprise, we were expected to wear masks. These were cleverly made out of pressed papyrus, artfully molded and painted to resemble various characters from mythology and poetry. They were rather like theatrical masks save that they left the mouth uncovered to facilitate eating, drinking and whatever other uses to which one wished to devote that orifice. I took one with a satyr's face; Hypatia, one with the licentious features of a nymph.
Then we had to have wreaths. Around our necks went wreaths of laurel and vine leaves, and Hypatia wrapped a garland of myrtle around her beautiful black hair. I chose a generous chaplet of acorn-studded oak leaves to help disguise my Roman haircut. Not that I was greatly worried in this place, where the crowd consisted mainly of Greeks and other foreigners. There were few if any Egyptians.
At the entrance a fat fellow dressed as Silenus came to greet us. He wore the white chiton, carried the flowing bowl and wore the chaplet of vine leaves complete with dangling bunches of grapes. He recited verses of welcome in the rustic Greek of Boeotia.
"Friends, enter these sacred precincts
In peace of heart and expectation of joy.
Here dread Ares has no home,
Nor does hardworking Hephaestus toil.
But only Dionysus of the grape, Apollo of the lyre,
Eros and the gentle Muses reign.
Here each man is a swain,
Each woman a carefree nymph.
Leave care and sorrow behind you
For these have no place here.
Welcome, doubly welcome, and rejoice!"
I tipped the man handsomely and we entered. The grove consisted of a series of interlocking arbors in the form of a maze. Torches burned, perfumed to give a fragrant smoke. There was just enough light to make everything clear and to reveal rich colors, but no more than that. A step would carry you from plain view to dark intimacy as desired. Everywhere were small tables on which little lamps burned, the low-level light making the masked faces nearby look like something from another world. Among the tables wandered women in the abbreviated tunics of mythical nymphs, men costumed as satyrs, boys with the pointed ears and tails of fauns, wild-haired women in the leopard skins of Bacchantes. All of them poured wine from amphorae or served delicacies from trays or danced or played wild music upon the syrinx and double flute and tambour. It was all quite licentious and abandoned to Roman eyes, but its joyous exuberance utterly lacked the fanatic hysteria of, say, the rites in the Temple of Baal-Ahriman.
"Come on, let's find a table," Hypatia urged. We wandered into the maze, taking so many turns that I despaired of ever finding a way out again. It is the virtue of such a place that you don't really care if you ever get out. Eventually we found a table with a top no larger than the thumping tambours of the musicians. A bright-eyed girl placed cups on our table and filled them. As she bent over, her breasts nearly fell out of her brief tunic. Hypatia eyed her as she danced away.
"A pity it's so cool," she said. "Most of the year they wear less."
We raised our cups and saluted each other. The cups were of finely polished olive wood, in keeping with the air of poetic rusticity. The wine was Greek, sharply resinous. A boy dressed as a faun brought a platter of fruits and cheeses. After the fanciful fare of the Palace, which was a delight to the eye and palate and a disaster to the digestion, this simple food was a distinct relief.
A troupe of Argive youths and maidens came through, performing the very ancient crane dance. Then came a huge, brawny man dressed as Hercules with a lion skin, who entertained the crowd with feats of strength. Then came singers who sang erotic verse or praises of the nature gods. There was no epic verse or songs of the deeds of warriors. It was as if all such unpleasantness had been banished for the night.
I found that one becomes a different person when wearing a mask. One is no longer constrained by the rigid views of one's upbringing and may instead adopt the persona of the mask, or else dispense with all such coercion and see the world as a god looking down from a passing cloud. Just so a gladiator, in donning the anonymity of the helmet, ceases to be the condemned criminal or the ruined wretch who sold himself to the ludus, and becomes instead the splendid and fearless warrior he must be out on the sand. Without my accustomed cosmopolitan, not to say cynical, poses, I could see these revelers and these performers as the very characters from pastoral poetry they pretended to be.
Hypatia, the hard-mouthed professional woman, became an exotic, flower-haired creature, her hands on the olive-wood cup like lilies made animate. I had always thought pastoral verse one of the silliest forms, but I was beginning to understand its attractions.
And I? I was growing rapidly drunk. The setting and the company provided an unwonted abandon, one to which I was not accustomed. At home, I always had to consider the possible political consequences of even my most private indiscretions. In a place like the Palace, I had to be ever mindful of who was behind me, as a matter of self-preservation. But here there was no one behind me. And, in any case, I was no longer Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, slightly disreputable scion of a prominent Roman family. I was a character in one of those poems where all the women are named Phyllis and Phoebe and the men are not men but "swains" and they're all named Daphnis or something of the sort.
In short, I let my guard down completely. I realize this sounds like the utmost folly, but a life lived cautiously is a dull one. All the really careful and cautious men I ever knew were drab wretches, while those who eschewed caution had interesting if brief lives.
Before long, I had our serving-girl, or one just like her, seated in my lap, while a faun-boy occupied the same place on Hypatia. They sang and popped grapes into our mouths as general liberties were taken by all. I learned more ways to drink someone's health in Greek than I ever dreamed could exist. Versatile language, Greek.
At some point during the night I found myself standing behind Hypatia, my hands on her lissome hips, and someone else's on mine. This might have been alarming, but it turned out that we were all doing the crane dance under the tutelage of the Argive youths and maidens. Like the bird for which it is named, the crane dance is a blend of grace and awkwardness. Hypatia supplied one and I the other. I had never danced before. Roman men never dance unless they belong to one of the dancing priesthoods. It seemed to me that these Greeks had happened upon a good thing.
The moon was very low when the whole reveling crowd poured out of the Daphne and wound its way up the spiral path of the Paneum. Live creatures mixed with the bronze ones along the path, cavorting and disporting themselves in the time-honored fashion of rural worshippers. In the heat of their exertions, many had divested themselves of clothing along with their inhibitions and sense of decorum.
In the sanctuary we all sang traditional hymns to Pan in the Arcadian dialect. The flickering light of the torches played over the bronze god and I thought I saw him smile, a real smile, not the fraudulent grimacing of Baal-Ahriman. The women draped their garlands around his neck and over his outsized phallus, and a few of the masked ladies begged him to help them conceive. If the fervor of the worship were of any help, they would all surely bear twins.