Callisto

“ He behaved like one who would be master in any situation. And then strange eyes were turned upon him – the eyes of the ‘children.’ A strange unearthly fact became instantly apparent: the children were all females! From mountains, from villages Parcele had never seen, from all the many fastnesses, they came to the rendezvous upon the plain. They were as many as the sands upon the shores of an inland sea. They were bigger even than Parlece – and all of entrancing beauty. There were roses in their cheeks, visible even in the subdued light of Callisto’s midnight. ”

“ But why the call now since Callisto would not need its males until twenty years hence unless they believed the light a discovery?
And so Parlece marched in among the women of Callisto, gorgeous creatures whose angelic faces did not hide from Parlece the innate danger he braved in appearing among them – for to the very least of them they resented the necessity of men. ”

“ One morning as the fair and gentle Callisto was gathering wild flowers in a field, she was suddenly changed into a bear. Then she was driven into a forest near by.
"You shall live in this forest forever! A cave under the rocks shall be your home!" exclaimed Juno.
Although she had the form of a bear, Callisto was still a woman at heart. She feared all the animals that she met.
The hunting dogs frightened her, and she would hide in terror from the hunters.
One day a young man was hunting in the forest. Callisto recognized him at once as her son Arcas. ”

“ Such is the ancient myth, which Otfried Müller endeavours to explain by the light of his lucid common sense, without the assistance which we can now derive from anthropological research. The nymph Callisto, in his opinion, is a mere refraction from Artemis herself, under her Arcadian and poetic name of Calliste, "the most beautiful". Hard by the tumulus known as the grave of Callisto was a shrine, Pausanias tells us, of Artemis Calliste.* Pamphos, he adds, was the first poet known to him who praised Artemis by this title, and he learned it from the Arcadians. ”

“ Callisto, the daughter of the wicked Lycaon, and the mother, by Zeus, of Areas, from whom the Arcadians took their name, was the granddaughter of Pelasgus. The birth of Arcas brought upon Callisto the anger of the virgin-goddess Artemis, whose service she followed: she was changed into a she-bear, and in this form was chased by her own son, grown to manhood. Zeus interposed, and the mother and son were removed from the earth, and placed among the stars. Callisto became the famous constellation of the Great Bear; her son became Arcturus, Arctophylax, or Boötes. ”

“ There was one consolation – no one looked at the two pronged sticks in his leathern belt. Cala thrust her hand into the opening – and Parlece was struck in spite of himself with a surge of admiration for her. What a mate she would make for a powerful man – if only there were no conflict, if only things were as they had been when Parlece had been young! He steeled himself against admiration. Cala drew from the inside of the cylinder a smaller cylinder, apparently of the same metal as the larger one. But there were strange hieroglyphics on it. None in all Callisto had ever seen such writing... ”

“ And even in the light gravity of Callisto, it took nearly all the strength she could summon and all her courage to haul the limp thing that had been a man all the way out of the gaping shaft and then push it, over and over, away from her, away from the hatch that had already begun to automatically swing downward. ”

“ It had become a race between the rapidly diminishing males, and the discovery, deemed inevitable by male and female alike, of the secret which would free Callisto of the bugaboo of the seventh generation. ”

“ Women had, by sheer force of will, been able, down the ages, to overthrow the men in the strangest warfare ever waged in the Universe. By experimenting they had almost been able to make the male entirely unnecessary. But always there was the bugaboo of the seventh generation, when males were necessary. The comparatively few males on Callisto, who were carefully kept apart from one another, were then in vast demand. ”

“ We feel, even now, that the conception of a “queen and huntress, chaste and fair,” the lady warden of the woodlands, is a beautiful and natural fancy which requires no explanation. On the other hand, the Artemis of Arcadia, who is confused with the nymph Callisto, who, again, is said to have become a she-bear, and later a star and the Brauronian Artemis, whose maiden ministers danced a bear-dance, are goddesses whose legend seems unnatural, and is felt to need explanation. ”

“ The priest began again: “Perhaps you have been growing in unhappiness for years; is it so? you assent. You have a heavy burden at your heart, you don’t well know what. And the chance is, that you will grow in unhappiness for the next ten years to come. You will be more and more unhappy the longer you live. Did you live till you were an old woman, you would not know how to bear your existence.”
Callista cried out as if in bodily pain, “It is true, sir, whoever told you. But how can you have the heart to say it, to insult and mock me!”
“God forbid!” exclaimed Cæcilius, “but let me go on. ”

“ Callista answered: For I have found my true Love, whom before I knew not.
“Martianus, the procurator, said: Your true love is, I ween, your last love; for all were true in their time.
“Callista said: I worship my true Love, who is the Only True; and He is the Son of God, and I know none but Him.
“Martianus, the procurator, said: You will not worship the gods, but you are willing to love their sons.
“Callista said: He is the true Son of the True God; and I am His, and He is mine.
“Martianus, the procurator, said: Let alone your loves, and swear by the genius of the emperor. ”

“ We love those things which do not last, but come to an end. Things being thus, He whom we ought to love has determined to win us back to Him. With this object He has come into His own world, in the form of one of us men. And in that human form He opens His arms and woos us to return to Him, our Maker. This is our Worship, this is our Love, Callista.”
“You talk as Chione,” Callista answered; “only that she felt, and you teach. She could not speak of her Master without blushing for joy.... And Agellius, when he said one word about his Master, he too began to blush....” ”

“ Callista, at least to look that way, to inquire into what you hear about it, and to ask for His help, if He be, to enable you to believe in Him?”
“This is what a slave of mine used to say,” cried Callista, abruptly; “... and another, Agellius, hinted the same thing.... What is your remedy, what your Object, what your love, O Christian teacher? Why are you all so mysterious, so reserved in your communications?”
Cæcilius was silent for a moment, and seemed at a loss for an answer. At length he said, “Every man is in that state which you confess of yourself. ”

“ What have I done to you that you should have got so cross and contrary and so hard to please?”
“I mean,” she said, “if I were a Christian, life would be more bearable.”
“Bearable!” he echoed; “bearable! ye gods! more bearable to have Styx and Tartarus, the Furies and their snakes, in this world as well as in the next? to have evil within and without, to hate one’s self and to be hated of all men! to live the life of an ass, and to die the death of a dog! Bearable! But hark! I hear Agellius’s step on the staircase. Callista, dear Callista, be yourself. Listen to reason.” ”

“ Callista is in prison on the charge of Christianity; I was in a sort of prison myself, or what was worse for my soul; and Juba, my brother, in the strangest of ways, has this morning let me out. Shall she not be saved, my father, in God’s own way, as well as I? At least we can all pray for her; but surely we can do more—so precious a soul must not be left to herself and the world. If she has the trials, she may claim the blessings of a Christian. Is she to go back to heathenism? Is she, alas! to suffer without baptism? Shall we not hazard death to bestow on her that grace? ”

“ How gloriously did he shoot over the hills! and then anon he rested awhile on the snowy summit of Olympus, as in some luminous shrine, gladdening the Phrygian plain. Fair, bright-haired god! thou art my worship, if Callista worships aught: but somehow I worship nothing now. I am weary.”
“Well,” said her brother in a soothing tone, “it is a change. That light, elastic air, that transparent heaven, that fresh temperate breeze, that majestic sea! Africa is not Greece; O, the difference! That’s it, Callista; it is the nostalgia; you are home-sick.” ”

“ For Spirit, as the Deity, is, he says, not any being different from the Logos, or the Logos from the Deity; therefore this one person, (according to Callistus,) is divided nominally, but substantially not so. He supposes this one Logos to be God, and affirms that there was in the case of the Word an incarnation. And he is disposed (to maintain) , that He who was seen in the flesh and was crucified [2] is Son, but that the Father it is who dwells in Him. Callistus thus at one time branches off into the opinion of Noetus, but at another into that of Theodotus, and holds no sure doctrine. ”

“ CHAPTER XXVII. AM I A CHRISTIAN? The sun had now descended for the last time before the solemn day which was charged with the fate of Callista, and what was the state of mind of one who excited such keen interest in the narrow circle within which she was known? And how does it differ from what it was some weeks before, when Agellius last saw her? She would have been unable to say herself. “So is the kingdom of God: as if a man should cast seed into the earth, and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, whilst he knoweth not.” ”

“ You profess to believe in One True God, and to reject every other; and now you are implying that the Hand, the Shadow of that God is on my mind and heart. Who is this God? where? how? in what? O Agellius, you have stood in the way of Him, ready to speak for yourself, using Him as a means to an end.”
“O Callista,” said Agellius, in an agitated voice, when he could speak, “do my ears hear aright? do you really wish to be taught who the true God is?” ”

“ The impostor Callistus, having ventured on such opinions, established a school of theology in antagonism to the Church, adopting the foregoing system of instruction. And he first invented the device of conniving with men in regard of their indulgence in sensual pleasures, saying that all had their sins forgiven by himself. [15] For he who is in the habit of attending the congregation of any one else, and is called a Christian, should he commit any transgression; the sin, they say, is not reckoned unto him, provided only he hurries off and attaches himself to the school of Callistus. ”

“ I like to be my own master, and am suspicious of anything irrevocable. Why should you commit yourself (do you see?) for ever, for ever, to a girl you know so little of? Don’t look surprised: it’s common sense. It’s very well to buy her; but to be bought, that’s quite another matter. And I don’t know that you can. Being a Roman citizen yourself, you can only make a marriage with a citizen; now the question is whether Callista is a citizen at all. I know perfectly well the sweeping measure some years back of Caracalla, which made all freemen citizens of Rome, whatever might be their country ”

“ He could not have behaved worse though I had played the bully with him, and had reproached him with his Christianity. But I have studiously avoided every subject which could put his back up. He’s a very Typhon or Enceladus for pride. Here he’d give his ears to have done with Christianity; he wants to have this Callista; he wants to buy her at the price of his religion; but he’d rather be burned than say, I’ve changed! Let him reap as he has sown; why should I coax him further to be merciful to himself? Well Agellius,” he said aloud, “I’m going back.” ”

“ For Agellius, he prayed, and for his; for the strange wayward Juba, for Jucundus, for Callista; ah! that Callista might be brought on to that glorious consummation, for which she seemed marked out! But the ways of the Most High are not as our ways, and those who to us seem nearest are often furthest from Him; and so our holy priest left the whole matter in the hands of Him to whom he prayed, satisfied that he had done his part in praying. ”

“ I could not be of your religion. Ye Gods! how have I been deceived! I thought every Christian was like Chione. I thought there could not be a cold Christian. Chione spoke as if a Christian’s first thoughts were goodwill to others; as if his state were of such blessedness, that his dearest heart’s wish was to bring others into it. Here is a man who, so far from feeling himself blest, thinks I can bless him! comes to me—me, Callista, a herb of the field, a poor weed, exposed to every wind of heaven, and shrivelling before the fierce sun—to me he comes to repose his heart upon. ”

“ Callista was not yet a Christian, nor was there any reason for saying that a proposal of marriage would make her one; and a strange sort of convert she would be, if it did. He would not suffer himself to dwell upon difficulties which he was determined never should be realized. No; of course a heathen he could not marry, but a heathen Callista should not be. He did not see the process, but he was convinced she would become a Christian. ”