Phorenice

“ So I went and stood before Phorenice, and said the words which the ancient forms prescribed concerning the carrying out of her wish.
“Then, now,” she said, “I will give myself to you as wife. We are not as others, you and I, Deucalion. There is a law and a form set down for the marrying of these other people, but that would be useless for our purposes. We will have neither priest nor scribe to join us and set down the union. I am the law here in Atlantis, and you soon will be part of me. We will not be demeaned by profaner hands. ”

“ Pah, my lord, your scruples are most decorous. But I did no more than repeat what the Empress had made public by proclamation. She is minded to take to herself a husband, and nothing short of the best is good enough for Phorenice. One after another has been put up in turn as favourite—and been found wanting. Oh, I tell you, we here in Atlantis have watched her courtship with jumping hearts. ”

“ Deucalion is above all other men in Atlantis, and if there is one who does not render him obedience, that man is enemy also of Phorenice, and shall feel her anger.”
She made a sign, and a stair was brought, and then she called to me, and I mounted and sat beside her in the golden half-castle under the canopy of royal snakes. The girl who stood behind in attendance fanned us both with perfumed feathers, and at a word from Phorenice the mammoth was turned, bearing us back towards the royal pyramid by the way through which it had come. ”

“ I had heard so much of Deucalion, and I thought I read honesty in you when first you came ashore; but now I know that you are no better than the rest. Phorenice offers you a high place, and you marry her blithely to get it. And why, indeed, should you not marry her? People say she is pretty, and I know she can be warm. I have seen her warm and languishing to scores of men. She is clever, too, with her eyes, is our great Empress ”

“ Not one woman out of a thousand, placed as she was, would have grown to be aught higher than a mere wife of some sturdy countryman, who was sufficiently simple to care nothing for pedigree. But look at Phorenice: it was her whim to take exercise as a man-at-arms and practise with all the utensils of war; and then, before any one quite knows how or why it happened, a rebellion had broken out in the province, and here was she, a slip of a girl, leading Zaemon’s troops. ”

“ By the Gods! but she could play a fine sword, this dainty Empress. She touched life with every thrust.
Yes, it was plain to see, now an example was given, that the throne of Atlantis had been won, not by a lovely face and a subtle tongue alone; and (as a fighter myself) I did not like Phorenice the less for the knowledge. I could but see her out of the corner of my eye, and that only now and again, for the fishers, despite their ill-knowledge of fence, and the clumsiness of their weapons, had heavy numbers, and most savage ferocity ”

“ I tell you, Deucalion, there is a marvellous fascination about the woman.”
“Her present historian seems to have felt it.”
“Of course I have. Every one who sees her comes under her spell. And frankly, I am in love with her also, and look upon my coming here as detestable exile. Every one near to Phorenice, high and low, loves her just the same, even though they know it may be her whim to send them to execution next minute.” ”

“ But, as I am bidden speak to Phorenice the woman now, and not to the Empress, I offer fair warning that I will be no puppet.”
She looked at me sidelong. “I have been master so long that I think it will come as enjoyment to be mastered sometimes. No, Deucalion, I promise that—you shall be no puppet. Indeed, it would take a lusty lung to do the piping if you were to dance against your will.”
“Then, as man and wife we will live together in the royal pyramid, and we will rule this country with all the wit that it has pleased the High Gods to bestow on us. ”

“ He always had been a slovenly fellow. “The temple door is shut,” he said, “and I only have the secret of its opening. My lord comes here, therefore, by the secret way, and as one of the Seven. I am my lord’s servant.”
“Then I ask this small service of you. Tell me, what stirs the city?”
“That impious Phorenice has declared herself Goddess, and declares that she will light the sacrifice with her own divine fire. She will do it, too. She does everything. But I wish the flames may burn her when she calls them down. This new Empress is the bane of our Clan, Deucalion, these latter days. ”

“ Zaemon had prophesied that this should be so, and for a witness, why I myself stood closer to her than we two stand now, and saw her.”
“I will own you took her by surprise somewhat there. I do not understand these matters myself; I was never more than one of the Seven in the old days; and now, quite rightly, Phorenice keeps the knowledge of her magic to herself: but it seems time is needed when one magic is to be met by another.” ”

“ It was a grim commentary on the success of Phorenice’s rule.
The crowd merged me into their ranks without question, and with them I pressed forward down the winding streets, once so clean and trim, now so foul and mud-strewn. Men and women had died of hunger in these streets these latter years, and rotted where they lay, and we trod their bones underfoot as we walked. Yet rising out of this squalor and this misery were great pyramids and palaces, the like of which for splendour and magnificence had never been seen before. ”

“ Yet lovely though she might be, for myself I preferred to look upon Ylga, the girl, who, because of her rank, was privileged to sit on the divan behind us as immediate attendant. There was an honesty in Ylga’s face which Phorenice’s lacked.
They did not eat to nutrify their bodies, these feasters in the banqueting-hall of the royal pyramid, but they all ate to cloy themselves, and they strutted forth new usages with every platter and bowl that the slaves brought. To me some of their manners were closely touching on disrespect. ”

“ You will not amend, neither will you yield tamely. You vaunt that you sit as firm on your throne as this pyramid reposes on its base. See how little you know of what the future carries. I say to you that, whilst you are yet Empress, you shall see this royal pyramid which you have polluted with your debaucheries torn tier from tier, and stone from stone, and scattered as feathers spread before a wind.”
“You may wreck the pyramid,” said Phorenice contemptuously. “I myself have some knowledge of the earth forces, as I have shown this night. ”

“ A pair of posturing, smirking chamberlains took me in charge, and ushered me with their flimsy golden wands to the dais at the farther end. It appeared that I was to sit on Phorenice’s divan, and eat my meat out of her dish.
“There is no stint to the honour the Empress puts upon me,” I said, as I knelt down and took my seat.
She gave me one of her queer, sidelong looks. “Deucalion may have more beside, if he asks for it prettily. He may have what all the other men in the known world have sighed for, and what none of them will ever get. But I have given enough of my own accord ”

“ He goes away lost in thought; lost in thought remains the emperor and many another; but Fenice is the most pensive of all: she discovers neither bottom nor bound to the thought with which she is filled, so greatly does it overflow and multiply in her. Full of thought she has come to Greece: there was she held in great honour as lady and empress; but her heart and spirit are with Cliges wherever he turns, nor ever seeks she that her heart may return to her unless he bring it back to her, he who is dying of the malady with which he has slain her. ”

“ The title of Phoinic seems at first to have been given to persons of great stature: but, in process of time, it was conferred upon people of power and eminence, like αναξ and ανακτες among the Greeks. The Cuthites in Egypt were styled Royal Shepherds, Βασιλεις Ποιμενες, and had therefore the title of Phœnices. A colony of them went from thence to Tyre and Syria: hence it is said by many writers that Phœnix came from Egypt to Tyre. People, not considering this, have been led to look for the shepherd's origin in Canaan, because they were sometimes called Phœnices. ”

“ The Phœnician must have failed to recognize in the new finery of the time the latest representative of a brotherhood that had long existed.
This strange individual, it seemed, lived by folly, and, though I had often noticed that wit was not a fat profession, I could not help regarding him with wonder. He was, under his veneer of shallowness, a most gentle and observant jester. Long study in the arts of pleasing had given him a very delicate discrimination of moods and men. He could fit a merriment to the capacity of any man’s mind with extraordinary acumen. ”

“ And when Harpalus, who had fled from Alexander out of Asia, carrying off a large sum of money, came to Attica, and there was a perfect race among the ordinary public men of the assembly who should be the first to take his pay, he distributed amongst these some trifling sums by way of a bait and provocative, but to Phocion he made an offer of no less than seven hundred talents and all manner of other advantages he pleased to demand ”

“ It is impossible for us to realize the intensity of the Greek feeling for beauty; and to them the human body was the noblest form of earthly loveliness. To illustrate, we may recall the incident of Phryne's trial before the judges. Hyperides, her advocate, failing in his other arguments, drew aside her tunic and revealed to them a bosom perfectly marvellous in its beauty. Phryne was at once acquitted, not from any prurient motives, but because "the judges beheld in such an exquisite form not an ordinary mortal, but a priestess and prophetess of the divine Aphrodite. ”

“ Æon, discovered that life might be sustained by the fruits of trees. Their immediate descendants were called Genos and Genea, who lived in Phoenicia, and in time of drought stretched forth their hands to heaven towards the sun; for him they regarded as the sole Lord of Heaven, and called him Baal-samin, which means ‘Lord of Heaven’ in the Phoenician tongue, and is equivalent to Zeus in Greek. ”

“ And as this sovereign Beauty is queen of herself, so she is subject to none other, owns to no constraining custom, fears no reproach of man. What she wills, that has the force of a law. Being Beauty, her deeds are lovely and worshipful. Therefore Phryne, whom men, groping in darkness and the dull ways of earth, dubbed courtesan, shone in a Court of Law before the assembled nobles of Athens, naked and undismayed in the blaze of her fairness. ”

“ Among the many public speakers who opposed him, Demosthenes, for example, once told him, "The Athenians, Phocion, will kill you some day when they once are in a rage." "And you," said he, "if they once are in their senses." Polyeuctus, the Sphettian, once on a hot day was urging war with Philip, and being a corpulent man, and out of breath and in a great heat with speaking, took numerous draughts of water as he went on. "Here, indeed," said Phocion, "is a fit man to lead us into a war! ”

“ Phryne, with a modesty one would not expect in a woman of her class, was very careful to keep her beautiful figure concealed, avoiding the public baths and having her body always enveloped in a long and graceful tunic. But on two occasions the beauty-loving Greeks had displayed to them the charms of her person. The first was at the solemn assembly at Eleusis, on the feast of the Poseidonia. Having loosened her beautiful hair and let fall her drapery, Phryne plunged into the sea in the sight of all the assembled Greeks. ”

“ The other principal Phoenician deities were El, Melkarth, Dagon, Hadad, Adonis, Sydyk, Eshmun, the Cabeiri, Onca, Tanith, Tanata, or Anaitis, and Baalith, Baaltis, or Beltis. El, or Il, originally a name of the Supreme God, became in the later Phoenician mythology a separate and subordinate divinity, whom the Greeks compared to their Kronos1135 and the Romans to their Saturn. ”

“ The long isthmus, and the peninsula in which it ends, have been compared to the stalk and blossom of a flower.5175 The flower was the ancient Gades, the modern Cadiz. The Phoenician occupation of the site is witnessed to by Strabo, Diodorus, Scymnus Chius, Mela, Pliny, Velleius Paterculus, Ælian and Arrian,5176 and is further evidenced by the numerous coins which bear the legend of “Agadir” in Phoenician characters.5177 But the place itself retains no traces of the Phoenician occupation. ”

“ When Movers and Kenrick published their valuable works on the history of Phoenicia, and the general characteristics of the Phoenician people, it was quite impossible to do more than form conjectures concerning their architecture from a few coins, and a few descriptions in ancient writers. It is now a matter of comparatively little difficulty to set before the public descriptions and representations which, if they still leave something to be desired in the way of completeness, are accurate, so far as they go, and will give a tolerably fair idea of the architectural genius of the people. ”

“ The Phœnix lives a thousand years, "a secular bird of ages:" and there is never more than one at a time in the world. Yet Plutarch very gravely informs us, that the brain of the phoenix is a pleasant bit, but apt to occasion the head-ache. By the bye, there are few styles that are not fit for something. ”

“ Society alone can discover the charms of the understanding, and women of virtue, amongst the ancient Grecians, were excluded from society. The courtesans, on the contrary, lived publickly at Athens, and by hearing frequent conversations on philosophy, politics, and poetry, they acquired taste, precision, and elegance. Their houses became the schools of eloquence, from whence the poets drew their feeling for ridicule and grace, and the philosophers simplicity of diction. Beautiful and highly accomplished, Phryne ranks among the most distinguished in that class of women. ”