Charles Kingsley

“ I am over head and ears in debt already; and the Amphitheatre is half in ruins, thanks to that fanatic edict of the late emperor's against gladiators. There is no time or money for repairing it; and besides, how pitiful a poor hundred of combatants will look in an arena built to hold two thousand! Consider, my dearest lady, in what fallen times we live!'
'I do, indeed!' said Hypatia. 'But I will not see the altar polluted by blood. ”

“ What if statecrafts and not philosophy and religion, were the appointed rulers of mankind? Hideous thought! And yet—she who had all her life tried to be self-dependent, originative, to face and crush the hostile mob of circumstance and custom, and do battle single-handed with Christianity and a fallen age—how was it that in her first important and critical opportunity of action she had been dumb, irresolute, passive, the victim, at last, of the very corruption which she was to exterminate? ”

“ By her taste, or fancy rather, I will not be ruled.'
'And I,' said Orestes, with a profusion of thanks, 'will retire to rack my faculties over the "dispositions." On this day week we exhibit—and conquer! Farewell, queen of wisdom! Your philosophy never shows to better advantage than when you thus wisely and gracefully subordinate that which is beautiful in itself to that which is beautiful relatively and practically.'
He departed; and Hypatia, half dreading her own thoughts, sat down at once to labour at the ode. ”

“ How are we to win the mob without a show? . . . . When were there more than two ways of gaining either the whole or part of the Roman Empire—by force of arms or force of trumpery? Can even you invent a third? The former is unpleasantly exciting, and hardly practicable just now. The latter remains, and, thanks to the white elephant, may be triumphantly successful. I have to exhibit something every week. The people are getting tired of that pantomime; and since the Jews were driven out, the fellow has grown stupid and lazy, having lost the more enthusiastic half of his spectators. ”

“ Hypatia looked down in painful thought. What could she answer? Was it not too true? and had not Orestes fact and experience on his side?
'Well, if you must—but I cannot have gladiators. Why not a—one of those battles with wild beasts? They are disgusting enough but still they are less inhuman than the others; and you might surely take precautions to prevent the men being hurt.'
'Ah! that would indeed be a scentless rose! If there is neither danger nor bloodshed, the charm is gone. But really wild beasts are too expensive just now; and if I kill down my present menagerie, I can afford no more. ”

“ Hypatia bit her lip once more. 'I can hear no more of this, sir. You forget that you are speaking to a woman.'
'Most supreme wisdom,' answered Orestes, in his blandest tone, 'you cannot suppose that I wish to pain your ears. But allow me to observe, as a general theorem, that if one wishes to effect any purpose, it is necessary to use the means; and on the whole, those which have been tested by four hundred years' experience will be the safest. ”

“ She would purify her thoughts by prayer and meditation. But to whom of all the gods should she address herself? To her chosen favourite, Athene? She who had promised to be present at that spectacle? Oh, how weak she bad been to yield! And yet she bad been snared into it. Snared—there was no doubt of it—by the very man whom she had fancied that she could guide and mould to her own purposes. He had guided and moulded her now against her self-respect, her compassion, her innate sense of right. Already she was his tool. True, she had submitted to be so for a great purpose. ”

“ Shouts of applause, at two drachmas per man, shake the skies. Everybody believes that everybody else approves, and follows the lead . . . . And the thing is won.'
'And pray,' asked Hypatia, crushing down her contempt and despair, 'how is this to bear on the worship of the gods?
'Why . . . . why, . . . . if you thought that people's minds were sufficiently prepared, you might rise in your turn, and make an oration—you can conceive one. Set forth how these spectacles, formerly the glory of the empire, had withered under Galilaean superstition . ”

“ It is no worse necessity than many another which the servant of the gods must endure in days like these.'
'Ah,' said Orestes, refusing to hear the sigh, or to see the bitterness of the lip which accompanied the speech—'now Hypatia is herself again; and my counsellor, and giver of deep and celestial reasons for all things at which poor I can only snatch and guess by vulpine cunning. So now for our lighter entertainment. ”

“ And poor Arsenius submitted with a sigh, as he saw Cyril making a fresh step in that alluring path of evil-doing that good might come, which led him in after years into many a fearful sin, and left his name disgraced, perhaps for ever, in the judgment of generations, who know as little of the pandemonium against which he fought, as they do of the intense belief which sustained him in his warfare; and who have therefore neither understanding nor pardon for the occasional outrages and errors of a man no worse, even if no better, than themselves. ”

“ Did not the most Christian Emperor Constantine set some three hundred German prisoners to butcher each other in the amphitheatre of Treves?'
'But they refused, and died like heroes, each falling on his own sword.'
'Ah—those Germans are always unmanageable. My guards, now, are just as stiff-necked. To tell you the truth, I have asked them already to exhibit their prowess on these Libyans, and what do you suppose they answered?'
'They refused, I hope.'
'They told me in the most insolent tone that they were men, and not stage-players; and hired to fight, and not to butcher. ”

“ The Nitrian monks had come down in a body, and carried them off before the very eyes of the sentinels. Orestes knew well enough that the fellows must have been bribed to allow the theft; but he dare not say so to men on whose good humour his very life might depend; so, stomaching the affront as best he could, he vowed fresh vengeance against Cyril, and went on his way. ”

“ But—why is Cyril, and not Hypatia, master of the masses of Alexandria this day? Why but because he and his have fought, and suffered, and died too, many a hundred of them, for their god, omnipotent as they believe him to be? Why are the old gods forgotten ”

“ If we must have comic representations, we can only have them conjoined to tragedy, which, as Aristotle defines it, will purify their affections by pity and terror.'
Orestes smiled.
'I certainly can have no objection to so good a purpose. But do you not think that the battle between the gladiators and the Libyans will have done that sufficiently beforehand? I can conceive nothing more fit for that end, unless it be Nero's method of sending his guards among the spectators themselves, and throwing them down to the wild beasts in the arena. ”

“ What would even you do in such a case?'
'Let them tear me limb from limb, and die as I have lived.'
'Ah, but—When it came to fact, and death was staring you in the face?'
'And why should man fear death?'
'Ahem! No, not death, of course; but the act of dying. That may be, surely, under such circumstances, to say the least, disagreeable. If our ideal, Julian the Great, found a little dissimulation necessary, and was even a better Christian than I have ever pretended to be, till he found himself able to throw off the mask, why should not I? ”

“ Why not have something which costs no money, like prisoners?'
'What! do you rank human beings below brutes?'
'Heaven forbid! But they are practically less expensive. Remember, that without money we are powerless; we must husband our resources for the cause of the gods.'
Hypatia was silent.
'Now, there are fifty or sixty Libyan prisoners just brought in from the desert. Why not let them fight an equal number of soldiers? They are rebels to the empire, taken in war.'
'Ah, then,' said Hypatia, catching at any thread of self- justification, 'their lives are forfeit in any case.'
'Of course. ”

“ How the only path toward the full enjoyment of eye and ear was a frank return to those deities, from whose worship they originally sprang, and connected with which they could alone be enjoyed in their perfection . ”

“ Well, if they are born low and earthly, they must, I suppose, he treated as such; and the fault of such a necessity is Nature's, and not ours.—Yet it is most degrading!—But still, if the only method by which the philosophic few can assume their rights, as the divinely-appointed rulers of the world, is by indulging those lower beings whom they govern for their good—why, be it so. ”

“ Some day, I hope, you will have learned to pity and to excuse the wretched compromise between that which ought to be and that which can be, in which we hapless statesmen must struggle on, half-stunted, and wholly misunderstood—Ah, well! ”

“ Some curse from Heaven, certainly, has fallen on our poets, to judge by their exceeding badness. Indeed, I am inclined to attribute the insane vagaries of the water-drinking monks and nuns, like those of the Argive women, to the same celestial anger. ”

“ But I will see that the sanctity of the altar is preserved, by confining the combat to the stage. And as for the pantomime which will follow, if you would only fall in with my fancy of the triumph of Aphrodite, Dionusos would hardly refuse his altar for the glorification of his own lady-love.'
'Ah—that myth is a late, and in my opinion a degraded one.'
'Be it so; but recollect, that another myth makes her, and not without reason, the mother of all living beings. Be sure that Dionusos will have no objection, or any other god either, to allow her to make her children feel her conquering might ”

“ It is an age of execrable taste, and we must act accordingly.'
'Ah!' answered Hypatia; 'the first step in the downward career of the drama began when the successors of Alexander dared to profane theatres which had re-echoed the choruses of Sophocles and Euripides by degrading the altar of Dionusos into a stage for pantomimes!'
'Which your pure mind must, doubtless, consider not so very much better than a little fighting. But, after all, the Ptolemies could not do otherwise. You can only have Sophoclean dramas in a Sophoclean age ”

“ We may make that as grand and as significant as we will, and expend too on it all our treasures in the way of gewgaws and wild beasts.'
'As you like.'
'Just consider, too, what a scope for mythologic learning a pantomime affords. Why not have a triumph of some deity? Could I commit myself more boldly to the service of the gods! ”

“ However, I can find unfortunate and misunderstood heroes enough in the prisons, who, for the chance of their liberty, will acquit themselves valiantly enough; and I know of a few old gladiators still lingering about the wine-shops, who will be proud enough to give them a week's training. ”