Woman and Puppet 10

Woman and Puppet 10

In a meadow apart, the fair and rosy daughters of the North lived

together sleeping upon the grass. These were women from Sarmatia

with triple-plaited hair, robust limbs, and square shoulders, who

made themselves garlands of the branches of trees and wrestled among

themselves for amusement; there were flat-nosed hairy Scythians and

gigantic Teutons who terrified the Egyptians with their hair which

was lighter than an old man’s and their flesh which was softer than a

child’s; there were Gauls like animals, who laughed without reason, and

young Celts with sea-green eyes, who never went out naked.

 

The women of Iberia, too, who had swarthy breasts, spent their days

together. They had heavy masses of hair which was skilfully arranged

and did not remove the hairs from their bodies. Their firm skins and

strong limbs were much in favour with the Alexandrians. They were as

often employed as dancers as taken for mistresses.

 

In the shade of the palm-trees dwelt the daughters of Africa, the

Numidians veiled in white, the Carthaginians clad in black gauze, and

Negresses clad in many-coloured costumes.

 

There were fourteen hundred women.

 

When a woman once entered the sacred garden, she never left it till the

first day of her old age came upon her. She gave to the temple half of

her gains and the rest sufficed for her food and perfumes.

 

They were not slaves and each one really possessed one of the Terrace

houses; but all were not equally favoured and the more fortunate

often purchased houses near their own which the owners sold to save

themselves from growing thin through starvation. The latter then

removed the image of their Divinity into the park and found an altar

consisting of a flat stone, near which they took up their abode. The

poor people knew this and sought out the women who slept in the open

air near their altars; but sometimes they were neglected even by the

poor, and then the unfortunate girls united in their misery, two and

two, in a passionate friendship which became almost conjugal love, and

shared their misfortunes.

 

Those without friends offered themselves as slaves to their more

fortunate companions. They were forbidden to have in their service

more than twelve of these poor girls, but these poor courtesans are

mentioned as having the maximum number which was composed of a

selection from many races.

 

If a courtesan bore a son, the child was taken into the precincts of

the temple for the service of her divinity. When a daughter was born

she was consecrated to the service of the Goddess. The first day of her

life her symbolical marriage with the son of Dionysius was celebrated.

Later she entered the Didascalion, a great school situated behind the

temple where little girls learned in seven classes the theory and

method of all the erotic arts; the glance, the embrace, the movements

of the body, caresses and the secrets of the kiss. The pupil chose

the day of her first experience because desire is a command from the

Goddess which must not be disobeyed; on that day she received a house

on the Terrace; and some of these children, though not yet nubile, were

the most popular of all.

 

The interior of the Didascalion, the seven classes, the little theatre

and the peristyle of the court were ornamented with ninety-two frescoes

which comprised the teaching of love. They were the lifework of a man,

Cleochares of Alexandria the natural son and disciple of Apelles,

who had furnished them on his death-bed. Lately Queen Berenice, who

was greatly interested in this famous school and had sent her little

sisters there, had ordered from Demetrios a series of marble groups to

complete the decoration; but only one of them had yet been placed in

position in the infants’ school.

 

At the end of every year in the presence of all the famous courtesans,

a great gathering took place at which there was extraordinary emulation

among the women to win the twelve prizes offered, for they consisted of

the entry into the Cotytteion, the greatest honour of which they ever

dreamed.

 

This last monument was wrapped in such mystery that to-day it is not

possible to give a detailed description of it. We only know that it

was in the shape of a triangle the base of which was a temple to the

Goddess Cotytto, in whose name frightful unheard-of debauchery was

committed. The two other sides of the monument consisted of eighteen

houses; thirty-six courtesans dwelt there, and were much sought after

by wealthy lovers; they were the Baptes of Alexandria. Once every

month, on the night of the full moon, they met within the temple

maddened by aphrodisiacs. The oldest of the thirty-six had to take

a fatal dose of the terrible erotogenous drug. The certainty of her

immediate death made her try without fear all the dangerous pleasures

from which the living recoil. Her body, which soon became covered with

sweat, was the centre and model of the whirling orgie; in the midst

of loud wailings, cries, tears and dancing the other naked women

embraced her, mingled their hair in her sweat, rubbed themselves upon

her burning skin and derived fresh ardour from the interrupted spasm of

this furious agony. For three years these women lived in this way, and

at the end of thirty-six months such was the intoxication of their end.

 

Other but less venerated sanctuaries had been built by the women in

honour of the other names of Aphrodite. There was an altar consecrated

to the Ouranian Aphrodite which received the chaste vows of sentimental

courtesans; another to Aphrodite Apostrophia, where unfortunate love

affairs were forgotten, and there were many others. But these separate

altars were only efficacious and effective in the case of trivial

desires. They were used day by day, and their favours were trivial

ones. The suppliants who had their requests granted placed offerings

of flowers on them, while those who were not satisfied spat upon

them. They were neither consecrated nor maintained by the priests and

consequently their profanation was not punishable.

 

The discipline of the Temple was very different.

 

The Temple, the Mighty Temple of the Great Goddess, the most holy place

in the whole of Egypt, was a colossal edifice 336 feet in length with

golden gates standing at the top of seventeen steps at the end of the

gardens.

 

The entrance was not towards the East, but in the direction of Paphos,

that is to say the north-west; the rays of the sun never penetrated

directly into the Sanctuary. Eighty-six columns supported the

architraves, they were all tinted with purple to half their height, and

the upper part of each stood out with indescribable whiteness like the

bust of a woman from her attire.

 

Within were placed sculptured groups representing many famous scenes,

Europa and the Bull, Lêda and the Swan, the Siren and the dying

Glaucos, the God Pan and a Hamadryad, and at the end of the frieze the

sculptor was depicted modelling the Goddess Aphrodite herself.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER II

 

MYLITTA AND MELITTA

 

 

“Purify yourself, stranger.”

 

“I shall enter pure,” Demetrios said. With the end of her hair dipped

in the holy water the young guardian of the gate moistened first his

eyes, then his lips and then his fingers, so that his look, the kiss

from his mouth and the caress of his hands were all sanctified.

 

Then he advanced into the wood of Aphrodite.

 

Through the darkening branches he saw the sun set a dark purple which

did not dazzle the eyes. It was the evening of the day when his meeting

with Chrysis had disturbed his life. That day he had seen a beautiful

woman upon the jetty, and addressed himself to her. She had declined

his advances though he was Demetrios the famous sculptor, a young,

wealthy and handsome man and the accredited lover of Queen Berenice. To

obtain her favour Chrysis, the courtesan, had imposed upon him three

almost impossible conditions. She required him to present to her the

silver mirror of Bacchis the famous courtesan, her friend, the ivory

comb worn by Touni the wife of the High Priest, and last of all the

necklace of pearls from the neck of the statue of the Goddess Aphrodite

within the Holy Temple. The first two of her demands could be carried

out possibly even without the shedding of blood, but her third behest

would mean the committal of an act of sacrilege punishable by death,

before which the boldest would hesitate. The feminine soul is so

transparent, that men cannot believe it to be so. Where there is only

a straight line they obstinately seek the complexity of an intricate

path. This was why the soul of Chrysis, in reality as clear as that of

a little child, appeared to Demetrios more mysterious than a problem

in metaphysics. When he left her on the jetty, he returned home in a

dream unable to reply to the questions which assailed him. What would

she do with the three gifts she had ordered him to procure her? It was

impossible for her to wear or sell a famous stolen mirror, the comb

of a woman who had perhaps been murdered in its acquirement, or the

necklace of pearls belonging to the Goddess. By retaining possession of

them she exposed herself every day to a discovery which would be fatal

to her. Then why did she ask for them? Was it to destroy them? He knew

that women did not rejoice in secrets and that good luck only pleased

them when it was well known to every one. Then, too, by what divination

or clairvoyance had she judged him to be capable of accomplishing three

such extraordinary deeds?

 

Surely if he had wished, Chrysis might have been carried off, placed

in his power and become his mistress, his wife or his slave, as he

pleased. He had too the chance of destroying her. Revolutions in the

past had accustomed the citizens to deaths by violence, and no one was

disturbed by the disappearance of a courtesan. Chrysis must know him,

and yet she dared....

 

The more he thought of her the more her strange commands seemed to

please him. How many women were her equal! how many had presented

themselves to him in an unfavourable manner! What did she demand?

Neither love, gold, nor jewels, but three impossible crimes! She

interested him keenly. He had offered her all the treasures of Egypt:

he realized now that if she had accepted them she would not have

received two obols, and he would have wearied of her even before he had

known her. Three crimes, assuredly, were an uncommon salary; but she

was worthy to receive it since she was the woman to demand it, and he

promised himself to go on with the adventure.

 

To give himself no time to repent of his resolutions that very day he

went to the house of Bacchis, found it empty, took the silver mirror

and fled into the gardens. Must he at once go to the second victim of

Chrysis? Demetrios did not think so. The wife of the High Priest Touni,

who possessed the famous ivory comb, was so charming and so weak that

he feared to approach her without preliminary precautions. So he turned

back and walked along the great Terrace.